SHAFAQNA– The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday said it would release the name of an individual sought by families of those killed on 9/11 who are suing the government of Saudi Arabia over possible complicity in the 2001 attacks.
according to Reuters , U.S. prosecutors in New York said in a court filing that Attorney General William Barr had decided not to invoke state secrets and will share the person’s name with attorneys involved in the case.
The decision could help victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and their family members, who charge in a long-running lawsuit that the Saudi government supported the hijackers who crashed jet liners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing nearly 3,000 people.
The Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.
The case, filed in 2003, received a boost in 2016 when Congress passed a law making it easier to sue foreign governments for alleged involvement in terrorism.
The victims’ families are suing the Saudi government, and as part of that lawsuit have tried to force the FBI to reveal key details of its investigation into possible official support for the plot. They have been battling over a redacted 2012 internal FBI document describing how two individuals linked to the Saudi government are suspected of having helped two of the 9/11 hijackers get settled when they arrived in the United States before the attacks. While most of the al-Qaeda hijackers were Saudi citizens, that country’s government has long denied any complicity in the attacks.
Specifically, the families have been pressing for more details about the Saudi government’s connections to Fahad al-Thumairy, a former Saudi consulate official, and Omar al-Bayoumi, a person the FBI once investigated as a possible Saudi intelligence officer.
After the 9/11titln.nn.afaqnaaafaqnaaaan..aaaaaaaaffaaa, Bayoumi told investigators that he met the hijackers by chance in early 2000 in a Los Angeles restaurant and that they became friends. Bayoumi helped them navigate their new lives in the United States, but denied any knowledge of their terrorist intentions.
The 9/11 families suspect those interactions were not accidental, but directed by a senior Saudi government official identified in the FBI document,Washington post reported.