Sen. Charles Schumer and Sept. 11 families yesterday called on President Bush to demand that Saudi Arabia’s rulers turn over a shadowy man who allegedly had advance knowledge of the terror plot.
The mysterious role of Saudi national Omar al-Bayoumi is said to be detailed in the 28 classified, blanked-out pages of the Senate’s Sept. 11 report, which reportedly spell out possible links between high-level Saudis and associates of the hijackers.
“The Saudi royal family should turn over al-Bayoumi to our law enforcement immediately. The administration ought to tell the Saudis, ‘You don’t get a thing from us until we get al-Bayoumi,’ ” Schumer (D-N.Y.) said after a meeting at his Manhattan office.
“If they give us an excuse, we will know they are not real on this issue,” said Schumer. “It just burns me” that the U.S. government is “playing footsie” with the Saudis on terrorism.
The blanked-out pages of the congressional Sept. 11 report quote the FBI’s “best source” in San Diego as saying that al-Bayoumi “must be an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia or another foreign power,” Newsweek magazine says. The magazine quotes a former top FBI official who helped oversee the al-Bayoumi probe as saying: “We firmly believed that he had knowledge [of the 9/11 plot].”
White House spokesman Ken Lisaius referred questions about al-Bayoumi to the State Department, where spokeswoman Joanne Moore had no immediate comment.
In January 2001, al-Bayoumi visited the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles and then immediately drove to a restaurant to meet two of the hijackers, according to Newsweek.
There are suspicions that he met at the consulate with Fahad al Thumairy, a Saudi diplomat who last March was stripped of his diplomatic visa and later barred from the United States, reportedly because of suspected links to terrorism, it says.
Al-Bayoumi, who had so much ready cash he once wrote a $400,000 check to buy a California mosque, helped the hijackers find an apartment and put down their first two months’ rent, the magazine adds.
A few months before Sept. 11, al-Bayoumi suddenly went from San Diego to Birmingham, Britain. He was picked up by the British on Sept. 20 but an extensive probe failed to find evidence to charge him, Newsweek says. He is now believed to be in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he denies any role in terrorism.
The mystery of Omar Al-Bayoumi
* Lived in San Diego and claimed to go to a college that has no record of him.
* Had so much ready cash he wrote a $400,000 check to buy a California mosque.
* Investigated – inconclusively – in 1998 after reports that groups of Arab men were meeting at his house and he got a mystery box filled with wires from the Middle East.
* Went to the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles in January 2000 and then immediately met two of the 9/11 hijackers, helped them find housing and put down their first two months’ rent.
* Suspicions that his meeting at the Saudi consulate was with a diplomat who later got stripped of his U.S. visa and barred from the United States for suspected terror ties.
* The 28 blanked-put pages of the congressional 9/11 report are said to include a quote from a top FBI source who said he was a likely Saudi or foreign intelligence agent.
* Suddenly left the United States and went to Birmingham, Great Britain, two months before the 9/11 attacks. Now said to be in Riyadh and denies any 9/11 role.