New videos obtained by the BBC reveal that the man at the center of a $1 trillion lawsuit filed by 9/11 families had extensive ties to Saudi government officials and participated in paintballing with a future leader of al-Qaeda.
The footage, which the FBI possessed within days of the 2001 attacks, directly contradicts Omar al-Bayoumi's 25-year assertion that he was not an extremist and not a Saudi spy. Bayoumi, who claimed to be a student while in the United States, is seen in one clip embracing Anwar al-Awlaki, who later led al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In another video, Bayoumi and Awlaki are seen paintballing near San Diego with an official from Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Islamic Affairs.
These videos are part of the 9/11 families' lawsuit against Saudi Arabia, alleging complicity in the attacks. The lawsuit claims Bayoumi assisted two of the 19 hijackers who crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, with a fourth plane crashing in Pennsylvania.
Bayoumi was arrested in the UK by the Metropolitan Police shortly after the attacks, and these videos were discovered among his belongings, along with other critical evidence, including a diagram of a plane with a flight descent equation.
Despite multiple FBI agents receiving copies of the diagram, it was never shared with the British interrogators or even some FBI agents investigating Bayoumi. It was also withheld from the 9/11 Commission, the independent inquiry into the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. Bayoumi was never prosecuted.
He and the Saudi government have consistently denied any involvement in or prior knowledge of the attacks. The FBI declined to comment.
Following a 2018 ruling that allowed the lawsuit to proceed, thousands of documents, videos, and photographs have been released to the court and declassified. BBC Panorama and Radio 4 have analyzed these materials and interviewed numerous agents and investigators to understand the evidence the FBI gathered regarding Bayoumi and Saudi Arabia's alleged role in 9/11, and why it was not fully pursued for over 25 years.
Our investigation also found that the plane diagram was analyzed by the FBI's New York office, but a US Department of Justice official stated he was never shown a proposal to prosecute Bayoumi based on the evidence. FBI agents in San Diego, where Bayoumi lived, repeatedly requested evidence but received little. Both the San Diego and Los Angeles FBI offices were prevented from interviewing Bayoumi's Saudi government contacts. Staff on the 9/11 Commission questioned the conclusion that Bayoumi was "unlikely" to have been involved with extremists.
Paintballing to 'train for jihad'
Omar al-Bayoumi moved to San Diego from Saudi Arabia in 1994, claiming to study English. However, court records indicate he largely abandoned his studies within a few years, focusing instead on organizing religious events, often filming them.
A video from 1997 or early 1998 shows men, including Anwar al-Awlaki, paintballing near San Diego. The group engaged in urban combat scenarios and target practice, many in military fatigues. Some men shouted "Allahu Akbar" during the activity. A visiting Saudi sheikh was present, and Bayoumi addressed Awlaki as "Sheikh Anwar."
Paintballing became a focus of FBI counter-terrorism investigations after 9/11, with the DOJ using such evidence in terrorism prosecutions. Bayoumi and Awlaki participated in paintball sessions in San Diego for at least three years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. FBI agents were informed that some participants were training for jihad.
While Awlaki's extremist preaching became more prominent after 9/11, he already had connections to al-Qaeda operatives at the time the video was filmed and was soon to be investigated by the FBI. He was killed in a CIA drone strike in 2011.
Saudi Arabia has stated that the paintball video does not identify who filmed or appeared in it. When questioned in 2021 for the 9/11 families' lawsuit, Bayoumi denied meeting Awlaki. The video evidence contradicting this claim was confidentially provided to the court a year later and made public on September 4th of this year.
Another previously unreported clip shows Bayoumi embracing Awlaki in January 1998. Further footage documents Bayoumi's numerous meetings with officials and preachers from Riyadh's Ministry of Islamic Affairs. One video shows him with two ministry officials at SeaWorld.
The Ministry of Islamic Affairs, established in 1993, was known for clerics who promoted a radical interpretation of Sunni Islam globally, funding mosques and sending officials to the US to oversee preachers with hard-line views.
Plane diagram found in Birmingham
Following the 9/11 attacks, Omar al-Bayoumi became an early suspect in the FBI's investigation. His name was found on an apartment rental agreement signed by Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, two of the hijackers who crashed a plane into the Pentagon.
The FBI traced Bayoumi to Birmingham, UK, where he had relocated before 9/11. On September 21, 2001, officers from the Metropolitan Police's Anti-Terror Branch arrested Bayoumi at one of his properties. He was taken to Paddington Green Police Station in London for questioning. Under UK law at the time, he could be held for only seven days without charge.
The following morning, British police began cataloging evidence from his properties, including thousands of documents, hundreds of photographs, flight tickets, phone cards, and at least 80 videotapes.
Within hours, several high-priority documentary evidence items, as directed by the FBI, were taken to Paddington Green, where an FBI agent was stationed. This evidence included a phone book with names of Saudi government officials, flight simulator software, travel documents, and a notebook page with a sketch of a plane and mathematical calculations related to its height.
Eighteen years later, the FBI submitted this notebook page to the court in the 9/11 families' lawsuit. The page, made public in 2022, contains an equation in Bayoumi's handwriting that calculates the height and distance needed for a pilot to guide an aircraft to a ground target, along with a drawing of a plane. Jodi Westbrook Flowers, a lawyer for the 9/11 families, described it as "the smoking gun."
In 2021, Bayoumi claimed he had the diagram because he enjoyed equations and could not recall when he wrote it. The federal judge in the lawsuit noted that the page, on its face, "connects Bayoumi with knowledge of the 9/11 Attacks."
By the evening of September 22, 2001, copies of the plane diagram had reached the FBI and UK counter-terror police in London. Records show it passed through at least three more FBI agents in the following two days. However, the British detectives interviewing Bayoumi were never given or briefed about the diagram, despite its significance.
The FBI declined to comment on these questions, and the Metropolitan Police stated they could not comment due to the ongoing legal case.
Carrier bags of video tapes
Soon after the plane diagram was sent to Paddington Green, all of Bayoumi's videos, including the paintballing footage, were transported from Birmingham to New Scotland Yard for copying. By September 24, the custody suite at Paddington Green had access to the video cassettes, and some footage was played to Bayoumi.
He was questioned about two tapes featuring a gathering, but British officers were not instructed by the FBI to ask about the paintballing video or his association with Anwar al-Awlaki.
On Bayoumi's final day before potential charges or release, Met detectives participated in a conference call with senior officials from the US Department of Justice and FBI. According to two participants, British detectives presented evidence they believed warranted extradition, but DOJ officials stated no extradition would be sought due to insufficient evidence.
Bayoumi was released on September 28, 2001. At that time, the FBI had not yet sent all the seized evidence back to the US or fully analyzed it. A memorandum from the FBI's legal attaché in London two weeks later noted that a "number of videos, floppy disks and documentation still to be viewed."
'We've convicted people for less'
After Omar al-Bayoumi's release, agents continued to analyze the evidence against him. The plane diagram was reportedly sent to the FBI's New York Field Office for analysis, but no records of this analysis or its conclusions have been found. Despite a 2021 Presidential order for the FBI to declassify 9/11 investigation files, only one document referencing the diagram, created 11 years after its discovery, has been released.
The diagram appears to have been lost in the system and was not shared with the San Diego FBI office, which was also investigating Bayoumi. Rick Lambert, who led the FBI's investigation in San Diego, stated that his office made repeated requests to New York for copies of the evidence but was denied, with New York asserting control over the case. Lambert believes that receiving and analyzing the evidence sooner could have led to a quicker resolution.
Documents show that in spring 2002, the San Diego office obtained copies of some videos from the FBI liaison in London, not from New York. The fate of the paintballing video is also unclear. While a copy was sent to the FBI's New York office and viewed, it was not included in summaries of Bayoumi's extremist connections. FBI and DOJ memos from 2002 discussed materials seized from Bayoumi's homes that could indicate "anti-American sentiments and beliefs" and "jihadist" writings, but did not mention the paintballing video or his connection to Awlaki.
Jeffrey Breinholt, then deputy director of counter-terrorism at the Department of Justice, told the BBC that Bayoumi was considered a "hot possibility for charges." However, he noted that the New York Attorney's Office never submitted charges for approval. Breinholt stated that the plane diagram would have been significant evidence and that "we've convicted people for less." He also described the paintballing video, with Awlaki's presence, as "very telling evidence" that could have led to a material support charge against Bayoumi.
No charges were brought against Bayoumi.
Agents investigating Omar al-Bayoumi faced other obstacles. In October 2001, Lambert and his colleagues in San Diego sought to interview Saudi officials suspected of coordinating Bayoumi's assistance to two hijackers. Permission was denied by FBI headquarters and the State Department due to the officials' diplomatic status.
Similarly, agents in Los Angeles were blocked from interviewing a Saudi religious diplomat Bayoumi had met. Steve Moore, who oversaw the FBI's 9/11 investigation in LA, described hitting a significant roadblock. The State Department also declined to comment.
A multi-course dinner with Saudi secret police
In October 2003, the 9/11 Commission interviewed Omar al-Bayoumi in Riyadh, where he had returned after his release by British police. The interview, conducted in the presence of Saudi secret police, included Philip Zelikow, the Commission's executive director, a senior staffer, and an FBI headquarters agent. Commission notes indicate Bayoumi was reassured that no one believed he knowingly aided the hijackers.
Bayoumi asserted he was a peace-lover and a "victim of the victims." The delegation had a dinner hosted by the Mabahith (secret police) without Bayoumi. After the interview, the Mabahith expressed a desire for Bayoumi to be cleared, and the Americans stated no exoneration would be possible before their report was published.
The 2004 9/11 Commission Report effectively cleared Bayoumi, describing him as "obliging and gregarious" and finding no evidence of extremist views. However, some Commission staff disagreed, believing it likely he knew Hazmi and Mihdhar were al-Qaeda operatives. These staff members objected to a statement in the report calling him "an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamist extremists."
A compromise was reached, attributing this conclusion to "our investigators who have dealt directly with him and studied his background." This line was based on a four-and-a-half-hour interview, which included the dinner interruption. The Commission never saw the plane diagram, the paintballing video, or other evidence seized by the Met Police.
Philip Zelikow stated that the Commission's findings were subject to government reviews and that they were "open about our suspicions and uncertainties. We were careful about whom to accuse of complicity in mass murder."
The Department of Justice stated it could not comment on decisions from 25 years ago involving former staff. Mary Galligan, head of the FBI's 9/11 investigation, previously asserted that the Commission had "access to everything."
Attempts to contact Omar al-Bayoumi through the Saudi government were unsuccessful. He has previously denied knowing the hijackers' intentions, being a Saudi spy, or having any involvement in 9/11. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has denied any complicity in 9/11.
