Funding Terror

[struggle4progress]

Investigating the role of Saudi banks.
By Lucy Komisar

<snip> When the reports surfaced, Haifa bint Faisal, wife of Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan, acknowledged that she sent nearly $150,000 to the wife of a Saudi living in San Diego. The recipient, Majeda Ibrahin Dweikat, signed over some of the checks to a friend whose husband, Omar al-Bayoumi (with Dweikat’s husband), helped hijackers Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi find housing in San Diego, open bank accounts, get Social Security cards, pay expenses and arrange flying lessons in Florida.

U.S. authorities suspected days after September 11 that al-Bayoumi, by then in Birmingham, England, had helped the hijackers. The British arrested him and, in a search of his house, found phone records showing calls to two diplomats at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. Lacking conclusive evidence, they released him, and he is now believed back in Saudi Arabia.

U.S. authorities continued to investigate his connections. FBI spokesman Ed Cogswell told In These Times that the bureau had discovered the bint Faisal money transfers when it examined al-Bayoumi’s accounts. (Records would have included the check endorsed to al-Bayoumi’s wife.) Bint Faisal insists she did not knowingly aid the terrorists—that she did not even know the woman—but was only giving charity to Dweikat, a thyroid patient, whose husband had written seeking funds to pay medical bills. <snip>

http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/27/04/news1.shtml