smh.com.au

America's oil-rich ally was the centre of hijack planning

By Howard Schneider in Abha, Saudi Arabia

After tracing the backgrounds and travel patterns of nine Saudis suspected in the airliner hijackings, United States investigators have concluded that some of the recruiting and planning for the attacks took place in Saudi Arabia, according to a US official familiar with the case.

Investigators have found evidence of an active branch of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network operating mainly in south-western areas of the kingdom, where people have also been linked to the October 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole in a Yemeni port.

The bin Laden operatives are thought to have assembled a core of young men who were in most cases "muscle" who seized control of the aircraft, according to the official.

From about April 2000 and continuing throughout that year, the men left the kingdom in a trickle, never more than a pair at a time.

The first to leave Saudi Arabia was apparently Hamza Alghamdi, who, local papers reported, had left his home of Baljurshi 18 months ago, saying he was bound for Chechnya, where foreign volunteers help Muslim rebels to fight Russian forces.

Three of the suspected hijackers were last seen by their families as they left for a trip to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, according to local press accounts.

Ahmed Alnami, a mosque prayer leader in Abha and former student at the King Khaled University Islamic law school, was reported to have left home in the summer of 2000.

Brothers Wail M. and Waleed M. Alshehri left on a similar route in December from the nearby village of Khamis Mushayt, according to local press accounts.

That is the same month that another Saudi hijacker, Hani Hanjour, arrived in America, according to the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service.

US officials say it is not certain whether the recruits knew the exact nature of the operation being planned. They probably left knowing only that they were to take part in a terrorist operation "in a certain time, at a certain place".

Only one, Hanjour, is suspected of piloting a plane, with the others providing the physical support needed to subdue or kill crew members.

Investigators are discovering that Saudi Arabia - the world's largest oil producer and a diplomatic, financial and military partner of the US - was a centre in planning for the operation.

US investigators suggest there was a more active bin Laden network in Saudi Arabia than previously thought - one able to recruit young men to their cause, and provide enough logistical support and co-ordination to get them out of Saudi Arabia undetected and into the US with the money and contacts to support themselves over several months as the final details of the attack were arranged.

Coming from mostly middle-class families with no obvious connections to radical elements, they would have blended easily into the stream of Saudi visa applicants who pass through the US Embassy in Riyadh or the Jeddah consulate each year.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2001