Moussaoui Calls Saudi Princes Patrons of Al Qaeda
WASHINGTON — In highly unusual testimony inside the federal supermax prison, a former operative for Al Qaeda
has described prominent members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family as major
donors to the terrorist network in the late 1990s and claimed that he
discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.
The Qaeda member, Zacarias Moussaoui,
wrote last year to Judge George B. Daniels of United States District
Court for the Southern District of New York, who is presiding over a
lawsuit filed against Saudi Arabia by relatives of those killed in the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He said he wanted to testify in the
case, and after lengthy negotiations with Justice Department officials
and the federal Bureau of Prisons, a team of lawyers was permitted to
enter the prison and question him for two days last October.
In
a statement Monday night, the Saudi Embassy said that the national
Sept. 11 commission had rejected allegations that the Saudi government
or Saudi officials had funded Al Qaeda.
“Moussaoui
is a deranged criminal whose own lawyers presented evidence that he was
mentally incompetent,” the statement said. “His words have no
credibility.”
Mr. Moussaoui received a diagnosis of mental illness
by a psychologist who testified on his behalf, but he was found
competent to stand trial on terrorism charges. He was sentenced to life
in prison in 2006 and is held in the most secure prison in the federal
system, in Florence, Colo. Mr. Moussaoui’s accusations could not be
verified.
The
allegations from Mr. Moussaoui come at a sensitive time in
Saudi-American relations, less than two weeks after the death of the
country’s longtime monarch, King Abdullah, and the succession of a
half-brother, King Salman.
There
has often been tension between Saudi leaders and the Obama
administration since the Arab uprisings of 2011 and the efforts to
manage the region’s resulting turmoil. Mr. Moussaoui describes meeting
in Saudi Arabia with Salman, then a prince, and other Saudi royals while
delivering them letters from Osama bin Laden.
There
has long been evidence that wealthy Saudis provided support for bin
Laden, the son of a Saudi construction magnate, and Al Qaeda before the
2001 attacks. Saudi Arabia had worked closely with the United States to
finance Islamic militants fighting the Soviet Army in Afghanistan in the
1980s, and Al Qaeda drew its members from those militant fighters.
But
the extent and nature of Saudi involvement in Al Qaeda, and whether it
extended to the planning and financing of the Sept. 11 attacks, has long
been a subject of dispute.
Mr.
Moussaoui’s testimony, if judged credible, provides new details of the
extent and nature of that support in the pre-9/11 period. In more than
100 pages of testimony, filed in federal court in New York on Monday, he
comes across as calm and largely coherent, though the plaintiffs’
lawyers questioning him do not challenge his statements.
“My
impression was that he was of completely sound mind — focused and
thoughtful,” said Sean P. Carter, a Philadelphia lawyer with Cozen
O’Connor who participated in the deposition on behalf of the plaintiffs.
He said that the lawyers needed to get a special exemption from the
“special administrative measures” that keep many convicted terrorists in
federal prisons from communicating with outsiders.
The
French-born Mr. Moussaoui was detained weeks before Sept. 11 on
immigration charges in Minnesota, so he was incarcerated at the time of
the attacks. Earlier in 2001, he had taken flying lessons and was wired
$14,000 by a Qaeda cell in Germany, evidence that he might have been
preparing to become one of the hijackers.
He
said in the prison deposition that he was directed in 1998 or 1999 by
Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan to create a digital database of donors to
the group. Among those he said he recalled listing in the database were
Prince Turki al-Faisal, then the Saudi intelligence chief; Prince Bandar
Bin Sultan, the longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States; Prince
al-Waleed bin Talal, a prominent billionaire investor; and many of the
country’s leading clerics.
“Sheikh
Osama wanted to keep a record who give money,” he said in imperfect
English — “who is to be listened to or who contributed to the jihad.”
Mr.
Moussaoui said he acted as a courier for Bin Laden, carrying personal
messages to prominent Saudi princes and clerics. And he described his
training in Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
A Terrorist’s Testimony
He
helped conduct a trial explosion of a 750-kilogram bomb as a trial run
for a planned truck-bomb attack on the American Embassy in London, he
said, using the same weapon used in the Qaeda attacks in 1998 on the
American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He also studied the
possibility of staging attacks with crop-dusting aircraft.
In addition, Mr. Moussaoui said, “We talk about the feasibility of shooting Air Force One.”
Specifically,
he said, he had met an official of the Islamic Affairs Department of
the Saudi Embassy in Washington when the Saudi official visited
Kandahar. “I was supposed to go to Washington and go with him” to “find a
location where it may be suitable to launch a Stinger attack and then,
after, be able to escape,” he said.
He said he was arrested before being able to carry out the reconnaissance mission.
Mr.
Moussaoui’s behavior at his trial in 2006 was sometimes erratic. He
tried to fire his own lawyers, who presented evidence that he suffered
from serious mental illness. But Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, who presided,
declared that she was “fully satisfied that Mr. Moussaoui is completely
competent” and called him “an extremely intelligent man.”
“He has actually a better understanding of the legal system than some lawyers I’ve seen in court,” she said.
Also
filed on Monday in the survivors’ lawsuit were affidavits from former
Senators Bob Graham of Florida and Bob Kerrey of Nebraska and the former
Navy secretary John Lehman, arguing that more investigation was needed
into Saudi ties to the 9/11 plot. Mr. Graham was co-chairman of the
Joint Congressional Inquiry into the attacks, and Mr. Kerrey and Mr.
Lehman served on the 9/11 Commission.
“I
am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the
terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and the government of
Saudi Arabia,” wrote Mr. Graham, who has long demanded the release of 28
pages of the congressional report on the attacks that explore Saudi
connections and remain classified.
Mr.
Kerrey said in the affidavit that it was “fundamentally inaccurate and
misleading” to argue, as lawyers for Saudi Arabia have, that the 9/11
Commission exonerated the Saudi government.
The three former officials’ statements did not address Mr. Moussaoui’s testimony.
The
9/11 lawsuit was initially filed in 2002 but has faced years of legal
obstacles. It was dismissed in 2005 on the grounds that Saudi Arabia
enjoyed “sovereign immunity,” and the dismissal was upheld on appeal to
the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
But
the same appellate court later reversed itself, ordering that the
lawsuit be reinstated. The Saudi government appealed to the Supreme
Court, but it declined to hear the case, so it was sent back to Federal
District Court in Manhattan. The filing on Monday was in opposition to
the latest motion by Saudi Arabia to have the case dismissed.
Mr.
Carter, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, said that he and his colleagues hoped
to return to the Colorado prison to conduct additional questioning of
Mr. Moussaoui and that they had been told by prison officials that they
would be allowed to do so. “We are confident he has more to say,” Mr.
Carter said.
Correction: February 6, 2015
Because of an editing error, an article on Wednesday about Zacarias Moussaoui, a former operative for Al Qaeda who testified that members of the Saudi royal family were donors to the terrorist organization in the 1990s, misstated the title of King Salman of Saudi Arabia when Mr. Moussaoui alleges he met with Salman in Saudi Arabia before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Salman was a prince, he was not the crown prince. (He became the crown prince in 2012.)
Because of an editing error, an article on Wednesday about Zacarias Moussaoui, a former operative for Al Qaeda who testified that members of the Saudi royal family were donors to the terrorist organization in the 1990s, misstated the title of King Salman of Saudi Arabia when Mr. Moussaoui alleges he met with Salman in Saudi Arabia before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Salman was a prince, he was not the crown prince. (He became the crown prince in 2012.)
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