Student's Links To Pentagon Hijackers

Student's Links To Pentagon Hijackers

Arrested Man 'Rented Rooms To Terrorists'

by Amardeep Bassey
The Sunday Mercury [Birmingham, England newspaper]
October 21, 2001

A Saudi-born student arrested in Birmingham in connection with the World Trade Center attacks rented apartments for at least two of the Pentagon suicide hijackers, the Sunday Mercury has learned.

According to a secret FBI report, Omar Ahmed Al-Bayoumi - known as Abu Imard - is alleged to have acted as a planning officer for an Al Qaeda network in California.

The terrorist cell, based in San Diego, included suicide hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid al-Midhar and Hani Hanjour.

The trio, and two other accomplices, were named by the FBI as being behind the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77 which crashed into the Pentagon, killing 184 people. Within days Al-Bayoumi, 44, and his 33-year-old wife Manal Ahmed Bagader appeared on an international list of people with possible connections to the September 11 hijackers.

Pivotal

The report, which was mistakenly published on a Finnish government website, alleged that Al Bayoumi played a pivotal role in arranging finances and communication for the San Diego cell.

The Sunday Mercury has learned that his alleged assistance included finding and paying for apartments for Alhazmi and al-Midhar at the Parkwood complex in the Clairemont district of San Diego during the spring and summer last year.

Al-Bayoumi had lived in an apartment only a few doors away and had been a resident in San Diego for nearly five years before mysteriously disappearing last May.

After his name appeared on the FBI list, the father-of-four was traced to an address in Highgate, Birmingham, where he was arrested by armed anti-terrorist officers last month.

But the Aston University mature student was released without charge after a week and it was later suggested this was the result of a breakdown in communications between the FBI and its British counterpart.

More recent press reports claimed Scotland Yard anti-terrorist detectives were frustrated that the FBI had not furnished them with enough information on Al -Bayoumi's links with the San Diego cell.

However, a police source told the Sunday Mercury that reports of police confusion were more likely to be a smokescreen to hide the fact that Al-Bayoumi had probably turned super-grass.

He said: 'It is extremely unlikely that MI5 would not have had detailed reports of the man's connections with the two hijackers.

'The chances are that the suspect decided to co-operate with the police and that is why he was not immediately extradited to the USA.

'Giving financial aid to terrorists is a very serious offence and there is no way they would have let him go scot-free.'

The super-grass theory was given added credence by reports in the San Diego press last week that Al-Bayoumi was still being sought by the FBI.

San Diego Union Tribune journalist Kelly Thornton told the Sunday Mercury: 'As far as we have been told by local police, Al-Bayoumi is still a wanted man and the authorities here did not tell us he had been arrested in Britain.

'There is no way he would have been released without charge considering he was mentioned in an FBI report which clearly linked him with the Pentagon hijackers.'

She said the confidential report, compiled by the FBI and European authorities within days of the New York attacks, had been been made available to governments worldwide to track down terrorist bank accounts.

Published

But Finland's Financial Supervision Authority, which oversees financial markets, mistakenly published the detailed list in full on its public website.

The exhaustive list, which included suspects, material witnesses and people who were acquainted with the hijackers but not necessarily considered suspects, was removed within hours and the Finnish government later apologised for the mistake.

Miss Thornton said residents of Parkwood apartments, where al-Midhar and Alhazmi lived only doors away from Al-Bayoumi, said the FBI had shown them photographs of Al-Bayoumi and asked questions about him.

Sources at the complex told agents he had found the apartments for the two hijackers and paid rent for them.

Neighbours at Villa Balboa apartment block, where Al-Bayoumi lived from 1996 to August last year, said he attended the same mosque as the hijackers and according to his rental application he was receiving $ 2,800 (about pounds 2,000) a month from 'family in India.'

Villa Balboa manager Claudia Alvarez told the San Diego Union Tribune that Al -Bayoumi had told her he was a graduate student.

Neighbours at the Parkwood apartments said he had moved out some time in May or June.

Last night the whereabouts of Mr Al-Bayoumi, who has not attended university since his release, were still unknown and the two Birmingham properties he rented - both close to the city's central mosque - were empty.

Both Scotland Yard and the FBI refused to comment.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of criminal justice, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.