23 years later, September 11 families continue quest for accountability from Saudi Arabia in landmark civil case

(CNN) — Twenty-three years after the deadliest attack on US soil in its history, the mantra “Never Forget” endures in the American consciousness as a solemn reminder of that day.

For the thousands of families who believe key facts have been withheld around the attack that stole their loved ones, it’s a phrase not so much uttered but lived.

Now, as survivors and the victims’ families commemorate another anniversary, they await a federal judge’s pivotal decision in their yearslong legal battle with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia over their claim of KSA’s role in backing an extremist support network that assisted the hijackers in the US leading up to the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The Kingdom denies the allegations.

For Terry Strada, the national chair of 9/11 Families United, a coalition of victims’ families and survivors pursuing transparency, Never Forget is a constant reminder to push for the truth about the tragedy that led to the death of her husband and nearly 3,000 others so the country is safer for her grandkids’ generation.

“It’s not just one time a year to remember those that were lost or murdered that day. It’s a pledge to ensure that the truth is told,” Strada told CNN. “There’s just so much more to it than just never forget them. It’s never forget what happened so we can prevent it from happening again.”

At a hearing in July over the Saudi motion to dismiss the case, attorneys for the families laid out evidence they say reveals the support network involving several high-ranking Saudi officials working in the US – some inside the embassy in Washington, DC – that facilitated the hijackers’ movements across the country.

The covert, militant network with an “anti-United-States mission,” plaintiff attorney Gavin Simpson said during the July 31 hearing, was “created, funded, directed and supported by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its affiliated organizations and diplomatic personnel within [the] United States.”

While 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens, Saudi Arabia has denied any government involvement in the attacks. The US has long said its strategic Middle East partner had no role and that al Qaeda acted on its own in hijacking four commercial airplanes and flying them into the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon. A fourth plane, United Flight 93, crashed in Pennsylvania.

But allegations of Saudi complicity have persisted. The litigation against Saudi Arabia has evolved since 2002. In 2016 Congress overrode a veto by then-President Barack Obama to enact a law allowing individuals to sue foreign governments for terror attacks, which cleared the way for the families’ claims against Saudi Arabia to proceed.

Thousands of lawsuits seeking compensation from Saudi Arabia for allegedly providing material and financial assistance to al Qaeda have been condensed into a multi-district litigation that’s being overseen by a federal district judge in Manhattan.

In 2018 federal District Judge George Daniels granted a narrow window for the families’ attorneys to seek discovery related to a purported terror cell run by two key players operating around Los Angeles and San Diego. The plaintiffs’ attorneys must prove the two Saudi nationals supported the hijackers as agents for Saudia Arabia at the direction of more senior Saudi officials.

If Daniels rules the case can continue to move forward, it could lead to more never-before-seen evidence becoming public.

The arguments in July highlighted evidence amassed through years of discovery slowly turned over by the Department of Justice, the Metropolitan Police Service in the U.K. and the Kingdom, including evidence only recently made public.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs put two Saudi nationals backed by the Kingdom at the top of a Southern California-based terror cell that supported two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, when they first came to the US in 2000 before eventually crashing American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.

A Saudi diplomat, Fahad Al Thumairy, stationed in the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, is said to have been the main designated contact person for al Qaeda and the hijackers in Los Angeles, according to plaintiffs’ court filings.

Focus on student who assisted two hijackers

Thumairy worked closely with another key figure in the litigation, Omar al-Bayoumi, in orchestrating the support system for Hazmi and Mihdhar during their time in California before their eventual move east in furtherance of the terror plot, according to the court filings.

Bayoumi – who was sponsored by the Kingdom as a student living in the United States had a job with a Saudi contractor – assisted the two hijackers upon their arrival in the country, according to the 2004 9/11 Commission Report. He helped them find a San Diego apartment, open a bank account and co-signed their lease, the report said at the time.

Information later released by the FBI supported the plaintiffs’ claim that Bayoumi and Thumairy orchestrated the support network in Southern California for Hazmi and Mihdhar at the direction of more senior Saudi officials working with known extremists including American-born al Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, who was eventually killed in an American drone strike in 2011, Simpson highlighted at the hearing.

But the 2004 report said it found no evidence at the time that Bayoumi had knowingly aided the hijackers. FBI findings of his alleged Saudi intelligence connection were not publicly released until more than a decade later.

Saudi Arabia has maintained that Bayoumi was a student devoutly involved with a San Diego mosque whose congregants unknowingly helped the hijackers out of hospitality to the newcomers who did not speak English..

At the July hearing, while arguing the motion to dismiss the litigation, Michael Kellogg, an attorney for Saudi Arabia, focused largely on Bayoumi, saying any assistance he provided the hijackers was “limited and wholly innocent.” Kellogg pinned his arguments on Bayoumi’s 2021 deposition, his interviews with law enforcement and conclusions from the 9/11 Commission report.

In a court filing, attorneys for Saudi Arabia said the plaintiffs had “strayed from reality” by focusing on Bayoumi, dismissing what they called “increasingly wild theories” about Bayoumi’s alleged involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

Evidence mapped out by the plaintiffs’ attorneys shows that Bayoumi met with a Saudi diplomatic official at the consulate just before meeting the hijackers for the first time at a restaurant in Los Angeles two weeks after they arrived in California. Bayoumi helped facilitate the hijackers’ move from L.A. to San Diego within days of that meeting.

Attorneys for the Kingdom say Bayoumi met the hijackers that day in 2000 by chance at a halal restaurant near a well-known mosque and had only “limited contact” with Hazmi and Mihdhar after initially assisting them. The Kingdom’s attorney also said there was no evidence that Thumairy did anything to assist the men but attorneys for the 9/11 families have presented FBI findings that Thumairy tasked a mosque parishioner to pick up the hijackers from the airport and bring them to Thumairy when they first arrived in Los Angeles in mid-January 2000.

In a remote deposition taken in this litigation in 2021, Bayoumi acknowledged he helped Hazmi and Mihdhar settle in San Diego but said he was not involved in the attacks.

He’s believed to be residing in Saudi Arabia but CNN’s efforts to reach Bayoumi were unsuccessful. CNN has reached out to the Saudi embassy in the US for comment.

Video footage at heart of the case

Evidence shown in court included new public materials provided to the plaintiffs by the Metropolitan Police Service, which had searched Bayoumi’s UK residence following the 9/11 attack.

That included video footage that captured a party Bayoumi hosted two weeks after the hijackers arrived in San Diego – a party the plaintiffs’ attorneys assert was thrown to welcome them, bless their mission and introduce them to men who would be involved in their support network. Simpson called Bayoumi the “master of ceremonies” in the newly released full footage of that party that also shows the hijackers helping Bayoumi host the gathering.

The footage had been described in the 9/11 Commission Report, but Simpson said at the hearing the commission did an inadequate analysis that failed to interpret the Arabic conversations. The plaintiffs have now identified all 29 men captured in the footage of the party, Simpson said – the 9/11 Commission Report only named five men who attended the gathering.

In their analysis, the plaintiffs’ attorneys determined that Saudi officials and other men known to be extremists were shown in the footage of the gathering.

Other video footage released in June through the lawsuit, first aired by CBS News and shared with CNN by the plaintiffs, shows Bayoumi filming around Washington, DC, over several days in 1999, in what plaintiffs allege to be a covert surveillance mission capturing the entrances and exits around the US Capitol building.

Officials have long believed the Capitol may have been an intended target of United Flight 93, which crashed on September 11 in Pennsylvania.

Attorneys for the Kingdom argued in court that Bayoumi was simply a tourist on holiday when he filmed his Capitol tour and visit with Saudi embassy officials.

At the hearing, Judge Daniels challenged a defense attorney about the video, in which Bayoumi was heard saying, “These are the demons of the White House.” One attorney for Saudi Arabia called the language “unfortunate,” but suggested it was taken out of context. The judge replied that it was not a statement he’d expect to hear from a tourist visiting a “pretty building.”

The footage of the party and Bayoumi’s alleged Capitol reconnaissance were recovered in a trove of video and documents seized at a residence Bayoumi held in the UK days after the 9/11 attack, according to plaintiff court filings. The plaintiffs obtained the evidence recovered from that seizure when the MPS complied with the discovery order in this case in 2022 and 2023.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys have mapped out what they allege were Bayoumi’s frequent phone interactions with Saudi officials, especially around the time he aided Hazmi and Mihdhar, using a contact book MPS also recovered from Bayoumi’s residence. The handwritten book recently made public in the litigation contains information for over 100 Saudi government officials, Simpson said in court, and if Bayoumi was really just a student and an accountant for a Saudi contractor, he wouldn’t have crossed paths with the high-level Saudi officials documented in the book.

The Kingdom’s attorneys chalked up some of the contacts to Bayoumi’s volunteer role at a San Diego mosque and questioned the admissibility of the phone book as evidence, arguing the plaintiffs cannot prove the book was created by Bayoumi within the scope of his purported duties for the Kingdom.

Plea agreement whiplash

As the hearing in July was ending in New York, the US Department of Defense unexpectedly announced a plea deal with alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other alleged co-conspirators that would allow the men to avoid the death penalty.

The plea deal announcement prompted a fierce backlash from politicians and some groups representing 9/11 victims who have pushed for the US government to pursue the death penalty for the Guantanamo Bay detainees said to have plotted the terror attack.

The office of the chief prosecutor for military commissions sent an email communication to the families shortly before publicly announcing the plea agreements that would have avoided a complex trial.

Many victims’ family members learned of the plea agreements after walking out of the daylong hearing in the litigation with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia held in a New York federal courthouse where cell phones are confiscated at the door.

At the time, Strada said the news was a gut punch as she stepped out of the downtown Manhattan courthouse.

Just two days later Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin revoked the plea deal in a surprise memo quietly released by the Pentagon on a Friday night, writing that “responsibility for such a decision should rest with me.”

In the memo, Austin withdrew prosecutorial authority to enter any plea agreements from Susan Escallier, the convening authority for the military commissions that run the military courts at Guantanamo Bay, reserving “such authority to (himself).”

Legal critics also now argue that Austin’s move to revoke the agreements was illegal and defense attorneys for KSM and the other two detainees are fighting the move in court.

As those proceedings continue to drag on after the plea agreement whiplash, Strada and other victims’ families hope the litigation against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia might bring them the justice they’ve been pursuing for more than 20 years.

And by holding the Saudi government accountable, Strada hopes, the litigation will serve as a warning.

“I hope it sends a really strong message to the world that if you attack Americans on US soil we will hold you accountable in a US court,” Strada told CNN.

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