WOODLAND PARK, N. J. – In the weeks leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attack, a little-known Saudi diplomat did a special in Jersey City.
The official goal of the Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah scale was to provide a million-dollar gift from a Saudi prince to the Al-Tawheed Mosque on Jersey City’s West Side Avenue. But now, the defenders of the victims of September 11 wonder if the holidays . . . and the $1 million donation – is related to the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil, which took place 19 years ago.
In a record in court earlier this year, the FBI revealed that al-Jarrah, who had been posted to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, one of the few Saudi officials to have provided money, housing and other aid in the summer of 2001 for 9/11 jihadists before crashing into advertising planes hijacked at the Trade World Center in the manhattan decline. Fix the Pentagon and an agricultural box in Pennsylvania.
It is the first time that al-Jarrah has been linked in any way to the 9/11 plot.
It remains to be noted whether the al-Jarrah scale at the Jersey City Mosque with a $1 million donation similar to September 11.
The million dollars represented a great donation to the maximum of all devoted teams in all circumstances, but this was especially vital for an unknown mosque in one of Jersey City’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods.
The donation has gained significant media coverage. Only Qatar’s Qatar-based Islamic news service, Al Jazeera, reported on the $1 million donation.
Questions about the gift did not even arise in 2003, when the mosque’s imam, Alaa Al-Sadawi, was convicted of manipulating the federal currency after being caught up in cash collection for a dubious charity that allegedly helped Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network. carried out the 9/11 attacks.
Now, however, the questions arise. Lawyers representing the families of thousands of 9/11 victims in an extensive and time-consuming trial that oppose the Saudi government’s plan to investigate that the jersey City vacation, and in all likelihood the $1 million gift, were truly a component of a secret effort across Saudi Arabia. officials to assist the team of Islamist militants who carried out the 9/11 attacks.
The trial in a federal court in south Manhattan took a dramatic turn Thursday night when the sentence on the pace of the case published a list of witnesses adding two dozen Saudi officials, and several members of the royal circle of relatives who might have been aware. Al-Jarrah was also approved to be a witness who can be questioned through the lawyers of the families of 9/11.
Judge Sarah Netburn’s 40-page decision, dated August 27 and made public on the eve of the September 11 anniversary, is a primary legal victory through family attorneys.
Netburn rejected the Saudis’ arguments that their officials enjoyed diplomatic immunity, but their resolution does not necessarily mean that the statements would be taken soon. The Saudis face more demanding situations for the witness list.
The potentially explosive accusation of the Jersey City mosque is still in a series of accusations in recent months that some Saudi officials not only knew about the 9/11 plot, but also actively helped the team of 19 al-Qaeda members before the attack.
In March, the columnist reported that lawyers for the 9/11 victims approached dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi a year before he was killed through Saudi agents in Istanbul. at a hearing where the victims’ lawyers also claimed that some of the witnesses in their case had been threatened.
Lawyers from the Saudi government have denied that potential witnesses have been threatened and also claimed that Khashoggi’s death is not similar to the 9/11 trial.
Meanwhile, Trump’s leadership has intensified its efforts to prevent 9/11 families from accessing secret FBI and CIA investigations into imaginable ties to Saudi Arabia with September 11. .
More recently, revelations about al-Jarrah have added to these questions.
Al-Jarrah’s trip to Jersey City coincided with the arrival in New Jersey of two key members of the September 11 plot, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who were in California. September 11 leader Mohamad Atta also arrived in New Jersey from Florida.
According to the FBI, Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi stayed for a short time at the Congress Inn, a motel on Highway 46 in South Hackensack, and Atta settled at Kings Inn, a motel on Highway 46 in Wayne.
Did the kidnappers meet al-Jarrah?
FBI officials will say either way. And a review via The Record, NorthJersey. com and USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey of a now-declassified FBI timeline of the kidnappers’ movements prior to the attacks gives no indication of such a meeting.
For lawyers representing the 9/11 victims, the coincidence is alarming and intriguing.
“Is it a coincidence that Atta, Mihdhar and Hazmi are in the neighborhood?”said Andrew Maloney, a former federal prosecutor who is now part of the legal team representing the families of 9/11 victims in his lawsuit.
Maloney added that he believed it was “very likely” for Atta, Mihdhar and Hazmi to visit the Al-Tawheed Mosque in Jersey City, had no false evidence.
“These guys have their nets, ” said Maloney.
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Khalid al-Shamma, chairman of Al-Tawheed’s board of directors, may simply not be contacted for comment. The mosque said it was traveling to Egypt.
But Kamel Hadd, the director of Al-Tawheed, said in an interview that the mosque was unrelated to the September 11 plot and that the $1 million donation was strictly used to expand the dominance of the mosque floor and build a school.
“That million dollars in the news a long time ago, ” said Hadd.
He added that the main mosque of al-Tawheed, which had been funded through the donation of $1 million, broke severely through a chimney in 2014. A new mosque, with two minarets, is recently under structure on another block of West Side Avenue. .
Hadd said he was unaware of recent revelations that al-Jarrah would possibly be related to the 9/11 plot.
Jersey City Director of Public Security James Shea, former deputy head of the New York Police Department, also said he was unaware of the imaginable link between Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 conspirators through the mosque. members of the Al-Tawheed network, or even the largest Muslim network in northern Jersey, were able to help the kidnappers unknowingly.
“Could other people have helped them without knowing it?” Shea asked. “I can see this a lot more than I can see intentional help. “
Shea’s question has permeated the story of September 11 almost since the day of the attacks and when the United States began to perceive what had happened.
How did 19 Islamist militants, 15 of them Saudi citizens, infiltrate the United States?Most of them don’t speak English, how did they manage to rent cars, take driving lessons, open bank accounts and find accommodation in motels?
The FBI timeline of the kidnappers’ movements of September 11, they engage in their business in northern Jersey as if they had lived here for years.
Think of some of the exploits of a kidnapper, Hani Hanjour, who was flying U. S. Flight 77 when he crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
On May 29, 2001, Hanjour visited Air Fleet Training Systems at Teterboro Airport. According to the FBI, Hanjour met with a flight instructor. Then the two did a “control tour,” a “Hudson Tour. “The next day, Hanjour withdrew $101 from an ATM at Little Ferry.
A week later, Hanjour, after taking a $161 flight from Sovereign Bank in Fairfield, rented a plane at Caldwell Flight Academy at Essex County Airport.
What Hanjour did was reproduced through other members of the September 11 plot. By tracking car credits, bank deposits, car rental receipts, and motel reservations, the FBI has established a long history of how kidnappers have taken over apartments in New Jersey, Florida, California. and Northern Virginia.
However, what the FBI’s chronology doesn’t show is whether the kidnappers beat local citizens, even without knowing it.
This factor is at the heart of the trial of 9/11 families who oppose the Saudi government.
The FBI discovered that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, two well-known al-Qaeda operatives followed through the CIA, had obtained abundant help from two linked to Saudi Arabia upon their arrival in Los Angeles.
In one of the most debatable articles in the history of September 11, the CIA stated that it informed the FBI when al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi landed in Los Angeles. Otherwise, the FBI could have monitored their activities.
A 2012 FBI report indicated that some other more influential Saudi official had overseen the Los Angeles operation, but the FBI did not release the official’s call until earlier this year and revealed that it was al-Jarrah.
The court filing of the disclosure, first reported through Yahoo News, was temporarily withdrawn through the FBI and has since been described as an error made by an FBI official in filing court documents.
As al-Jarrah’s call has been made public, questions arise about his role in the 9/11 plot.
It is known Al-Jarrah. La the Saudi embassy responded to requests for comment.
But al-Jarrah’s revelation to Jersey City in August 2001 raised even more questions about his role and whether he could be called as a witness at trial through the families of the 9/11 victims.
“I would say it’s a big mystery,” said James Kreindler, one of the victims’ leading lawyers.
The problem, Kreindler said, is whether it can continue to put pressure on the Saudis, and the U. S. government, to publish more documents that can provide information on the entire history of September 11.
“When the writing is on the wall and the politics increases,” he said, “we’re going to break up. “
Mike Kelly is an award-winning columnist from NorthJersey. com. Follow him on Twitter: @mikekellycolumn