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Journalism of Courage
A man suspected by US of links to two Sept 11 hijackers denied in remarks published on Tuesday that he assisted them in any way and said he had been cleared by US and British investigators.
US authorities say Omar al-Bayoumi knew hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi when they lived in San Diego before the September 11, 2001, attacks against the US and had helped pay their rent.
Bayoumi, at the centre of a recent controversy over whether a money trail links the Saudi government to the two hijackers, said he had met them but did not know them well. ‘‘If there was any proof of my offering financial or other assistance to them, I would not be sitting here in Jeddah,’’ he said.
‘‘I have been investigated by Scotland Yard, the CIA, by the FBI and by Saudi authorities and nothing was proven against me,’’ he said.
US investigators are looking into whether some charitable cheques from the wife of the Saudi ambassador to Washington to the Jordanian wife of a Saudi man in need of surgery may have reached the hijackers through Bayoumi.
The woman’s husband, Osama Bassnan, has said in published remarks that the funds were spent on medical costs and denied giving Bayoumi or anyone else any money. Bayoumi said the matter of the cheques was baseless.
