A former al-Qaeda operative jailed in the United States has told lawyers that members of the Saudi royal family provided millions of dollars to the terrorist group in the 1990s.
Zacarias Moussaoui, a 46-year-old French citizen, made the revelations in a testimony submitted in a New York federal court on this week by lawyers for victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks who accuse Riyadh of sponsoring al-Qaeda.
Three of the Saudi princes accused by the Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui have strong diplomatic and business ties to the United States.
Moussaoui said a list of al-Qaeda donors that he created during Osama bin Laden's mandate included some "extremely famous" Saudi officials, including Prince Turki al-Faisal, then the Saudi intelligence chief; Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the longtime Saudi ambassador to the US; and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a famous Saudi billionaire businessman.
- Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, at 59 is a grandson of Saudi Arabia's founder, King Abdulaziz, and is chairman of the Kingdom Holding Company and the richest member of the royal family. (The rapper Busta Rhymes namechecks Prince Alwaleed in the 2008 song “Arab Money.”)
He owns Rotana, the Arab world's largest entertainment firm, and holds important investments in Citigroup, TimeWarner, Twitter and Apple, among other companies. He had a large stake in News Corporation until Tuesday, when his company sold $188 million worth of its shares, according to Financial Times.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Prince Alwaleed offered Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani $10 million for the Twin Towers Fund, but Mr. Giuliani rejected it after the prince criticized US policy in the Middle East region.
- Prince Turki al-Faisal, 69, is another of the king’s nephews. He replaced Prince Bandar as the Saudi ambassador in Washington in 2005 and served in that post for two years.
He was the head of Saudi intelligence from 1977 until Aug. 31, 2001, and managed Riyadh’s relations with Osama bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar of the Taliban.
In an interview in 2005, he said the accusation contained in a lawsuit, later dismissed, that he supported Al Qaeda “was kind of a blow in the face.”
- Prince Bandar bin Sultan was known as “the toast of Washington” who had an “aura of charming roguishness” when he served as Saudi ambassador to the United States from 1983 until 2005.
He is a nephew of King Salman and King Abdullah, who passed away last month. Prince Bandar, 65, had been close to President George Bush and his son, President George W. Bush, and helped deliver Saudi support for America's crucial Middle East initiatives during three wars and the fight against terrorism.
He was the head of Saudi intelligence from 2012 until last April, and had been the designer of Riyadh’s plan to remove President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and lobbied against an interim nuclear agreement with Tehran.