ISLAMABAD-UNS;Twenty-five years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, questions about Saudi Arabia’s relationship with the perpetrators remain among the most politically sensitive and contested aspects of the 9/11 story.
The established historical record is clear on one fundamental point: the attacks were carried out by 19 al-Qaeda hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.
Osama bin Laden, the organisation’s founder and leader, was also Saudi-born. But Saudi nationality, institutional connections and individual assistance to the hijackers are not, by themselves, evidence that the Saudi government ordered or organised the attacks.
That distinction is essential.
The available evidence nevertheless raises legitimate questions about the environment in which al-Qaeda operated, the networks that facilitated the movement of its personnel, and the extent to which individuals connected to Saudi institutions may have assisted members of the conspiracy.
The 9/11 Commission investigated these questions extensively. It found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution, or senior Saudi officials individually, funded al-Qaeda. At the same time, the Commission acknowledged that Saudi Arabia had been an important fundraising environment for al-Qaeda and that inadequate oversight of charitable giving allowed money to reach extremist networks.
The question of Omar al-Bayoumi remains particularly controversial.
Al-Bayoumi was a Saudi national who had worked for more than two decades in the orbit of the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority and was living in California when Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar arrived in the United States. The two men later became hijackers on American Airlines Flight 77.
The 9/11 Commission established that al-Bayoumi encountered the pair in California and subsequently helped them obtain accommodation and settle in San Diego. FBI records released later also documented his assistance to the two men and his contacts with Fahad al-Thumairy, an accredited Saudi diplomat and imam at the King Fahd Mosque near Los Angeles.
Telephone records also established repeated contact between al-Bayoumi and al-Thumairy. The Commission recorded numerous calls between the two men.
These connections naturally generated suspicion.
Yet suspicion is not the same as proof.
The Commission specifically examined whether al-Thumairy had assisted al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. Although it regarded him as a legitimate subject of investigation, it ultimately stated that it had found no evidence that he provided assistance to the two future hijackers. Similarly, investigators described al-Bayoumi as a person who could have concealed aspects of his activities, but concluded that they had found no credible evidence that he knowingly aided Islamist extremists.
The timing of al-Bayoumi’s movements also attracted considerable attention. He travelled from San Diego to the Los Angeles area on 1 February 2000, the same day he visited the Saudi consulate to deal with administrative matters. He subsequently encountered al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar at a restaurant. The Commission could not establish conclusively whether that encounter was accidental or deliberate.
This ambiguity is precisely why the Saudi connection has remained controversial.
There is another important correction to the conventional narrative surrounding the plot. The 9/11 Commission identified Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the principal architect of the attacks. It also traced substantial evidence concerning the financing of the operation back to him. The Commission said that the precise ultimate source of KSM’s money was not established, while noting that the total cost of the operation was relatively modest by al-Qaeda’s financial standards.
The broader history of al-Qaeda is equally important.
Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in 1988, following the anti-Soviet jihad. The organisation subsequently developed independently and increasingly hostile relations with Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden’s Saudi citizenship was revoked, and Saudi authorities did not permit him to return to the Kingdom after his period in Sudan. The 9/11 Commission records that he eventually returned to Afghanistan in 1996.
Therefore, the proposition that the Saudi state simply “created al-Qaeda” and subsequently directed the organisation towards the 9/11 attacks is not supported by the established historical record.
A more complicated picture emerges instead: Saudi Arabia was a major ideological, financial and social environment for the development of militant Islamist networks; numerous al-Qaeda members were Saudi; wealthy Saudi donors and charitable structures provided opportunities for extremist fundraising; and some individuals connected to Saudi institutions came into contact with the hijackers.
But none of those facts, taken individually or collectively, establishes that the Saudi government planned or ordered 9/11.
The political consequences of the attacks, however, are beyond dispute.
September 11 transformed American foreign policy. The United States launched its war in Afghanistan, subsequently invaded Iraq, dramatically expanded its counter-terrorism architecture and increased military operations across the wider Middle East and South Asia.
Saudi Arabia, despite the nationality of most of the hijackers, became a major American partner in the subsequent campaign against terrorism.
This produced an extraordinary historical paradox: a country whose nationals constituted the overwhelming majority of the hijackers remained a strategically important US ally, while Washington simultaneously pursued al-Qaeda and other militant organisations.
The attacks also transformed the international image of Islam. Violent extremist movements increasingly became associated in Western public discourse with Islam itself, despite the fact that Muslims constituted a substantial proportion of the victims of al-Qaeda’s subsequent violence.
The tragedy therefore cannot be reduced to a simple Saudi-versus-American narrative.
A more defensible conclusion is that 9/11 exposed a complex web of militant ideology, private financing, transnational religious networks, intelligence failures and geopolitical interests. The evidence demonstrates significant Saudi connections surrounding some of the perpetrators, but it does not establish that Saudi Arabia, as a state, carried out the attacks.
Twenty-five years later, that distinction remains crucial.
The unresolved questions should continue to be investigated. But historical analysis must distinguish between established evidence, circumstantial evidence and political interpretation.
That is not an attempt to protect any government.
It is an attempt to ensure that the search for accountability remains anchored in evidence.
