Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national suspected of having contacts with two September 11 hijackers, was paid with Saudi government funds for several years while living in the United States, The Wall Street Journal said on Friday. The details of Bayoumiâs source of financial support was gleaned from newly reviewed internal documents from the Saudi government and Bayoumiâs employment records that link him to the Saudi government more directly than was previously known.
| Somebody hand Prince Nayef a towel. There's egg on his face... |
Bayoumi, who worked for a contractor for the Saudi civil aviation authority, befriended future September 11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Midhar when they came to San Diego in early 2000 and even helped them pay rent, according to people familiar with a still classified section of a recently released congressional report on the attacks. He was questioned in Britain shortly after the attacks, but was released and quickly left for Saudi Arabia. Saudi Ambassador to the United States Prince Bandar bin Sultan has called allegations that Bayoumi was a Saudi agent âblatantly false.â
| And we know he'd never lie to us... |
Bayoumi, in interviews with Arab media outlets, has also dismissed the charges that he had contacts with the September 11 hijackers as groundless. An unclassified section of the congressional report said Bayoumi worked for the Saudi civil aviation authority at one time and had access to large amounts of money from unspecified sources in Saudi Arabia. The employment records in the hands of US investigators, however, show that money from the Saudi government was paid to Bayoumi as salary, ostensibly for working for a Saudi government contractor, when he lived in California. When the contractor tried to end Bayoumiâs employment in 1999 a Saudi government official objected and Bayoumi remained on the payroll.
"You can't fire him. We pay his salary, so we say he stays."
"But he don't do nothin'!" |
For seven years, the finance department of a Saudi Civil Aviation Presidency project called Air Navigation Systems Support employed Bayoumi. Managed by Dallah Avco Aviation, the project is a unit of the giant Dallah Al-Baraka business group, which for five of the seven years was reimbursed by the government agency for Bayoumiâs salary.
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