At the Global Summit on Terrorism and Political Violence in New York, we are just getting new details on the role that Saudi government officials allegedly played in the September 11th terrorist attack.
Gavin Simpson, the plaintiffs’ counsel in the 9/11 litigation, stood on stage and shared details of the investigation — information that he says was denied to the 9/11 Commission.
That included footage of a “welcome party” with Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi man in San Diego who he says conspired with a Saudi diplomat and the hijackers. He said new digital visualization techniques allowed researchers to identify “the entire attendees of the party, 29 individuals who were hand-picked by Saudi Arabia in order to provide precisely the forms of support the hijackers needed.”
He also shared video footage that Bayoumi allegedly gathered at the U.S. Capitol, collecting intelligence on the building’s structure and security before the attacks. And he showed an image of Bayoumi’s calculations about an airplane, collected by U.S. law enforcement 10 days after the attacks.
The Saudis have tried to get the lawsuit dismissed, but a U.S. judge in Manhattan decided last week that the case should move forward.
As another part of The Soufan Group’s conference, counterterrorism experts described how the lines have blurred in ways we could never before have imagined.
