FBI accidentally names Saudi diplomat it suspects having links to 9/11 hijackers

The FBI has accidentally identified a Saudi diplomat whom they believe had links to the terrorists behind the September 11 attacks, confirming for the first time that US authorities suspected Riyadh’s Washington embassy was involved in the atrocity.

In a court filing responding to the families of September 11 victims, who claim in a lawsuit that Saudi Arabia is responsible for the attacks, the FBI apparently forgot to blank out a reference to Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah.

Mr Jarrah was assigned to Saudi Arabia’s Washington embassy from 1999-2000 in Washington DC, and the US authorities believe that he oversaw assistance given to two al-Qaeda terrorists as they settled in the US before the attack.

The two al-Qaeda members, Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi, went on to hijack an American Airlines plane and kill 125 people after crashing into the Pentagon building.

It is the first time that the FBI has publicly confirmed that it suspects a link between the Saudi embassy in Washington and the September 11 hijackers.

The court document was filed by Jill Sanborn, the assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, and was alluding to findings in a heavily redacted FBI report when it mentioned Mr Jarrah.

The 2012 report identified two other Saudi men, Fahad al-Thumairy and Omar al-Bayoumi, who were suspected of assisting the hijackers, but it did not name Mr Jarrah, whom the FBI suspects was the “the third man" involved.

US investigators believed that Mr Bayoumi was a Saudi intelligence agent - though Saudi Arabia denies this - and that he helped the two Al Qaeda terrorists find an apartment upon their arrival in the United states.

The disclosure has been welcomed by the families of September 11 attack victims and may strengthen their legal case.

“This shows there is a complete government cover-up of the Saudi involvement,” a spokesman for the victims’ families, Brett Eagleson, told Yahoo News, which first broke the story.

The Telegraph has approached the Saudi authorities for comment.

Saudi Arabia has vehemently denied any role or complicity in the September 11 attacks. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who carried out the attacks were Saudis.

According to Yahoo News, the FBI’s declaration has now been removed from the court filing as it was made in error.

Michael Isikoff, the chief investigative journalist at Yahoo News who was the first to notice the apparent mistake, told Al Jazeera he knew right away the disclosure was "a slip-up".

"In fact, both Attorney General William Barr and the Acting Director of the National Intelligence Richard Grennell had filed motions with the court saying that any information relating to the Saudi embassy official and all internal FBI documents about this matter were so sensitive; they were state secrets, that means if revealed they could cause damage to the national security."

A former FBI agent who worked at the agency at the time of the 9/11 attacks speculated whether the inclusion of the name was done mistakenly.

"It could be or it may be intentional to apply some pressure," the agent, who did not wish to be named, told The Telegraph. "From having worked with the FBI, documents like that are very, very carefully reviewed before they are released and a big slip up like this one raises some flags."