The US Congress on Friday released a long-classified section of the official report on the Sept. 11 attacks describing an array of potential links between some of the hijackers and officials in Saudi Arabia.
The 28 pages of the report on the 2002 investigation focus on potential Saudi government ties to the 2001 aircraft attacks on the United States, in which nearly 3,000 people died.
The report said the alleged links had not been independently verified.
The pages were released by the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee after years of wrangling in Washington between Congress and different administrations, Republicans and Democrats, and urging by families of those killed.
"The matter is now finished," Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told a news conference in Washington. Asked whether the report exonerated the kingdom, he replied: "Absolutely."
The release of the previously classified pages is unlikely to end the controversy over the role of Saudi Arabia, an important US partner in the Middle East. Many US officials who opposed their release had worried they would damage diplomatic relations.
Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi citizens.
"According to various FBI documents and CIA memorandum, some of the September 11 hijackers, while in the United States, apparently had contacts with individuals who may be connected to the Saudi Government," the report said, giving a catalog of alleged links.
They included reported contacts between Saudis in California, money possibly sent from the Saudi royal family to the hijackers and even a statement that a reported Saudi Interior Ministry official stayed at the same Virginia hotel as one hijacker in September 2001.
One section said Omar al-Bayoumi, said to be a Saudi intelligence officer, met with two hijackers at a public place after they arrived in San Diego. Citing Federal Bureau of Investigation files, it said his salary rose to $3,700 a month from $465 two months after two of the hijackers arrived in California.
Another described how two of the hijackers asked flight attendants technical questions during a trip in 1999 from Phoenix to Washington to attend a party at the Saudi embassy. One tried twice to enter the cockpit. The plane made an emergency landing and the FBI investigated, but did not prosecute.
The newly declassified pages also say a telephone number found in a telephone book of Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi-born al Qaeda operative captured in Pakistan, was for a Colorado corporation that managed the affairs of the residence of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to Washington.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said its agreement to the release is not an indication that the intelligence community agrees with the pages' accuracy or concurs with the information it contains.
The office also on Friday released a declassified summary of an assessment of whether Riyadh may have supported al Qaeda before and after the attacks, saying the Saudi government and many of its agencies had been infiltrated and exploited by individuals associated with or sympathetic to Osama bin Laden's militant network.
REUTERS