Riyadh denies royal financing of two September 11 persons; US Congress shakes US- Saudi relations
Saudi Arabia-USA, Politics, 11/25/2002

American- Saudi relations were shaken yesterday, with the call made by several US Congress members and the state of justice to open investigations on the accusations addressed to the royal family in Saudi Arabia of financing two of the persons accused of taking part in September 11 incidents through its embassy in Washington.

A matter which Riyadh denied strongly on Saturday, considering that those who direct the accusations "are interested in scoring political gains rather from knowing reality." Replying to these accusations, the White House indicated that the FBI continued a large scale investigation about this matter.

In its recent issue, News Week Magazine said that Saudi funds were sent to two students in the US who had relations with two of the pilots who carried out the September 11, 2001 attack through a bank account at a bank in Washington for princesses Haida al-Faisal, wife of the Saudi ambassador in the USA, prince Bander Bin Sultan.

The paper quoted a source at the FBI that the sums were transferred in 2000 to San Diego, California, to the account of a Saudi student in California along with another student described by the magazine as a relative to Bayoumi and one of al-Qaida supporters. The magazine added that the two students were having contacts with Khaled al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazimi who were on the board of the plane which collided by the building of the US Pentagon near Washington.

The chairman of the intelligence committee at the US Senate, senator Bob Graham said in a statement to NBC that a deeper investigations should be made to find out any likely involvement of a government with certain terrorists. Graham considered that the recent accusations as "actually serious."

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