Moussaoui claims Saudi royals ‘funded 9/11 attacks’

BBC:

   Al-Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui has claimed members of the Saudi
   royal family helped fund the 9/11 attacks.

   Moussaoui, imprisoned in Colorado for his role in the attacks, gave
   testimony in October to lawyers for 9/11 victims suing the country.

   His statement came to light when it was filed in court this week in  response to a Saudi bid to drop the lawsuit [Lawsuit by families of 9/11 victims]

 Saudi Arabia has rejected the accusation from a “deranged criminal”
   with  [the Saudis claim] no credibility. They have made several attempts for the lawsuit to be dropped.

   In a rare interview for an inmate at a high security “supermax” prison,
   Moussaoui said “extremely famous” Saudi officials, including Prince
   Turki al-Faisal Al Saud, a former Saudi intelligence chief, were
   funding al-Qaeda from the late 1990s.

   He also claimed to have met a Saudi official in Afghanistan who worked
   in the US embassy.

Cartoon in Fars: Saudi security chief Bandar bin Sultan is behind terror activity in Syria and Iraq. January 12, 2014.

The two men were later supposed to travel to Washington to find a
   location “suitable to launch a stinger [missile] attack” on Air Force
   One, Moussaoui said.

 His claims, made under oath, have not been verified.

   Moussaoui was arrested weeks before the 9/11 attacks on immigrations
   charges and was in prison at the time of the attacks. He had taken
   flying lessons in Minnesota and had been wired money by an al-Qaeda
   affiliate.

   In court at his sentencing, Moussaoui said he had been part of a
   grandiose plot to fly a Boeing 747 into the White House.  But testimony from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – also in US custody – was used by Moussaoui’s defence lawyers to undercut his claims during trial [Note: given that torture before trial and during is a sad reality in
 the united stated in such cases, moussaoui could and would say
 anything he thought people wanted to hear. The same pressure and brutality may not be there now that he is not on trial but serving a life sentence, so one cannot automatically apply the "his statements now are equal in their reliability or unrelaiability as during his trial" -ED]

   Families of 9/11 victims allege that Saudi Arabia and a
   government-affiliated charity knowingly provided funding and other
   material support to al-Qaeda that helped it carry out the attacks.

   Plaintiffs include families of the nearly 3,000 people killed, as well
   as insurers that covered losses suffered by building owners and
 businesses

Above from BBC News: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31134936
Also Yahoo News story:

http://news.yahoo.com/moussaoui-20th-hijacker-911-saudi-royal-princes-testimony-143814464.html Title:

Sept. 11′s ’20th hijacker’ claims members of Saudi royal family were al-Qaida donors

Zacarias Moussaoui, a former al-Qaida operative sometimes referred to as the “20th hijacker” involved in the 9/11 attacks, claims that members of the Saudi royal family supported the terrorist organization.

In sworn testimony given last October from a Colorado federal prison where he is serving a life sentence, Moussaoui alleged that in the late 1990s he was directed by Osama bin Laden to create a digital database of al-Qaida’s donors.

“Sheikh Osama wanted to keep a record who give money … who is to be listened to or who contributed to the jihad,” Moussaoui said, according to a transcript of the deposition filed in federal court in New York on Monday and published Wednesday by the New York Times.

Among them: Prince Turki Al-Faisal, then the Saudi intelligence chief; Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States; and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a prominent billionaire investor.

Moussaoui — a French national who was detained in Minnesota weeks before 9/11 and pleaded guilty to six terror-related charges in 2005 — also alleged that he once delivered letters from bin Laden to King Abdullah’s brother, Prince Salman, and other members of the Saudi royal family. Abdullah died last month, and Salman was installed as king. [To be fair, the viciously brutal Saudi dictatorship does not want to directly help extremists who might overthrow it. But it has been happy for years to fund violent extremist groups around the world to further its extreme Wahabi interpretation of Islam. The US-backed US-armed brutal but oil-rich "monarchy" makes Iran look mild and moderate by comparison, so extreme is the Saudi dictatorship, but U.S. media use far, far milder terms to descdribe the oil-rich ally, giving U.S. citizens an opposite impression]

In a statement, the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington dismissed Moussaoui’s allegations. “There is no evidence to support Moussaoui’s claim. The Sept. 11 attack has been the most intensely investigated crime in history, and the findings show no involvement by the Saudi government or Saudi officials,” the statement read. “Moussaoui is a deranged criminal whose own lawyers presented evidence that he was mentally incompetent. His words have no credibility. [Moussaoui's] goal in making these statements only serves to get attention for himself and try to do what he could not do through acts of terrorism — to undermine Saudi-U.S. relations.”

In 2004, the 9/11 Commission concluded there was no evidence that the Saudi government funded al-Qaida. It does not appear that any government other than the Taliban financially supported al-Qaida before 9/11, although some governments [READ: including the Saudi Arabian government] may have contained al-Qaida sympathizers who turned a blind eye to al-Qaida’s fund-raising activities,” the commission’s report said. “Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al-Qaida funding, but we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution [not "as an institution" but did fund it in other ways?? Strange language] or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization.”

[Another U.S.-backed regime, Turkey, also helped violent extremists including ISIS just in an

effort to overthrow the Syrian government by violent force, see image of above story]

Moussaoui’s deposition was taken as part of a motion [by the US-armed US-funded Saudi dictatorship] to dismiss a civil lawsuit filed [FILED BY FAMILIES OF THOSE KILLED ON 9/11 AS YAHOO NEWS SHAMEFULLY STILL HAS FAILED TO INFORM READERS BY THIS POINT IN THE ARTICLE. A LAWSUIT BY FAMILIES OF VICTIMS] against Saudi Arabia by relatives of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

During his 2006 sentencing, Moussaoui tried to fire his lawyers, who argued that he had a mental illness. But a judge ruled that he was fully competent.

And Sean P. Carter, a lawyer who participated in the October deposition, told the Times, “My impression was that he was of completely sound mind — focused and thoughtful.”

In his testimony, Moussaoui also described in detail a planned truck-bomb attack on the American Embassy in London, as well as plotting attacks using crop-dusters.

Additionally, Moussaoui said that he had been directed to meet with an official in the Islamic Affairs Department of Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Washington to explore “the feasibility of shooting Air Force One.”

“I was supposed to go to Washington … find a location where it may be suitable to launch a Stinger attack [on Air Force One] and then, after, be able to escape,” he said.

See also:

/war-and-conflict/2013/11/bbc-exclusive-report-saudis-about-to-get-nukes-for-their-balistic-missiles-2449526.html