A video seized by British detectives from an early 9/11 suspect 23 years ago raises a series of questions, says a survivor of the attacks.
The previously-unseen film was shot by the suspect as he wandered around US government buildings in Washington DC two years before the hijackers struck.
He filmed the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court and security guards inside and gave a running commentary, at one point saying in Arabic: “They say that our kids are demons. However, these are the demons of the White House.”
Over shots of a low-flying plane, he says: “Airport not far from here. Plane taking off.”
The hour-long film ends on the Capitol building, where the camera lingers on two limousines. The voiceover says: “Their cars. You said that in the plan.”
Scotland Yard officers discovered the tape when they arrested the suspect, a mature Saudi student, Omar al-Bayoumi, at his home in Birmingham ten days after 9/11.
He was questioned by counter-terror detectives for seven days and then released without charge.
He was later identified by the FBI as a Saudi intelligence agent. He denies that and any part in 9/11, and has told US investigators his film was a simple tourist video.
He has admitted, a year later, innocently befriending two of the future terrorists who flew a hijacked plane into the Pentagon, killing 189 people.
A still from the video
It’s not known if al-Bayoumi’s tape and all or any of the items seized during the raid were passed on to the American authorities at the time in 2001.
The video was shown recently during a civil court case in New York in which the 9/11 victims and families, the plaintiffs, are trying to sue the Saudi government for complicity in the attacks.
The plaintiffs’ legal team asked the Metropolitan Police three years ago to search its archive and send anything it had from its investigation into Mr al-Bayoumi. A team of eight detectives and staff spent several months sifting through 104 boxes of archived files.
Plaintiffs’ lawyer Gavin Simpson played the tape and told the judge: “A trove of evidence seized by the Metropolitan Police…. enables your honour, the public and the 9/11 families to perceive for themselves the mechanism by which Saudi Arabia provided support to the 9/11 hijackers.
“Bayoumi’s videotape bore all the characteristics, the hallmarks of al Qaeda casing a terrorist target.”
Sharon Premoli escaped from the 80th floor during the attack on the twin towers
Campaigner Sharon Premoli, a 9/11 survivor, listened into the recent hearing when parts of the tape were played and said: “Al-Bayoumi’s language was very incriminating.
“Two words he used in particular, one being the ‘demons’ inside the Capitol and number two ‘the plan’ he referred to. It’s not a tourist video, he was casing the buildings and the area.”
Ms Premoli, who escaped from the 80th floor during the attack on the twin towers in Manhattan, said: “It’s wonderful that the Met Police was able to confiscate this information, but it’s unfortunate we had to wait so long for it.
“We don’t know how long anyone in the US government had the material. We know the FBI and the CIA were not helping each other and a lot was missed because of that. It’s also possible the Bush administration had it and decided not to do anything with it to protect the Saudis.”
Also shown in court for the first time was a notebook page with scribblings and calculations about the distance of an aeroplane from the ground and the horizon. Mr al-Bayoumi said it was part of his teenage son’s homework project.
Pic: Reuters
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Neither the notebook nor the tape was provided to the members of the 9/11 Commission which produced an account of the attacks and what led up to them. It criticised the FBI and the CIA, but after interviewing al-Bayoumi in Saudi Arabia, concluded he hadn’t been part of the plot.
Robbyn Swan, co-author of the authoritative The Eleventh Day, the Full Story of 9/11, said: “The items that the Met has supplied are crucial new bits of evidence which, on my reading of them, really do support the notion that an employ or employees of the Saudi regime aided and abetted the 9/11 hijackers and that is at the heart of the case.
“Some of my sources have suggested that from very early on the FBI was reluctant to look at the possibility of official Saudi involvement and this is part and parcel of the kind of obstruction of that part of the investigation they saw at the time.”
In the past the Saudi government has denied it or any of its officials encouraged or supported the 9/11 terrorists.