Omar Moustafa al-Bayoumi () is a Saudi national with verified links to two of the 9/11 hijackers in the United States, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, and Anwar al-Awlaki, a al-Qaeda key organizer, later leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Evidence made public in August 2026, only examined after 2012 and not available to the 9/11 Commission, shows that al-Bayoumi had links to Saudi government officials in the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. Saudi Arabia claims that al-Bayoumi is not its agent.
Life Declassified FBI files describe him as being from an Egyptian family that migrated to Saudi Arabia. Until 1994, he lived in Saudi Arabia, working for the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation, a department headed by Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz.
In August 1994, al-Bayoumi moved to the United States and settled in San Diego, California, where he became involved in the local Muslim community. He was perceived as being very inquisitive, and was known to always carry around a video camera. According to several sources, al-Bayoumi was strongly suspected by many residents to be a Saudi government spy. The man the FBI considered their "best source" in San Diego said that al-Bayoumi "must be an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia or another foreign power," according to Newsweek magazine.
During this time, al-Bayoumi was purportedly a San Diego State University student learning remedial English in the United States as part of a Saudi work-study program. In fact, he only attended the fall, 1994 semester.
Income The Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation paid al-Bayoumi's salary through a government contractor. When the contractor proposed terminating its relationship with al-Bayoumi in 1999, a Saudi government official replied with a letter marked "extremely urgent" that the government wanted al-Bayoumi's contract renewed "as quickly as possible." As a result, Al-Bayoumi's employment with the project continued.
When interviewed by the FBI in 2003, al-Bayoumi stated he worked for Saudi aviation company Dallah AVCO. Witnesses at Dallah AVCO describe al-Bayoumi as one of 50 "ghost employees" who were paid by the company despite never showing up for work. One witness described al-Bayoumi accruing such outrageous expenses that at one point AVCO refused to pay him.
Al-Bayoumi came to the FBI’s attention in 1998 when his apartment manager reported him receiving packages from the Middle East containing exposed wiring and hosting large gatherings of Middle Eastern men at his residence.
Some time in late 1999 or early 2000, al-Bayoumi began receiving another monthly payment; this one from Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the wife of Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. Cheques for between $2,000 and $3,000 were sent monthly from the princess, through two or three intermediaries, to al-Bayoumi. The payments continued for several years, totalling between $50,000 and $75,000. According to the documents of the 2002 congressional inquiry into the September 11 attacks, al-Bayoumi was not the direct recipient of the checks; Osama Bassnan's wife was. Bassnan was a close associate of al-Bayoumi, and commented to an FBI source "that he did more for the hijackers than al-Bayoumi did." The report further states that, although the money was ostensibly meant for Bassnan, al-Bayoumi's wife had attempted to deposit three of the cheques into her own account.
Connection with hijackers Al-Hazmi and Al-Mihdhar On 15 January 2000, after attending the 2000 al-Qaeda summit for Al Qaeda members in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, future 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar flew from Bangkok, Thailand to Los Angeles, California. Al-Bayoumi reportedly helped these two hijackers to settle in the United States, eventually finding them housing in the neighborhood where he resided. During the period that he did so, his salary greatly increased.
The final 9/11 Commission Report noted:
"Hazmi and Mihdhar were ill-prepared for a mission in the United States. ... Neither had spent any substantial time in the West, and neither spoke much, if any, English. It would therefore be plausible that they or [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] would have tried to identify, in advance, a friendly contact for them in the United States. ... We believe it unlikely that Hazmi and Mihdhar ... would have come to the United States without arranging to receive assistance from one or more individuals informed in advance of their arrival."
After they landed, Al-Bayoumi met them at the Mediterranean Gourmet Restaurant on Venice Boulevard. He invited them to move to San Diego with him, where he found them an apartment, co-signed the lease, and advanced them $1,500 to help pay for their rent. (The 9/11 Commission, however, concluded that "[n]either then nor later did Bayoumi give money to either Hazmi or Mihdhar.") Al-Bayoumi also helped them obtain driver's licenses, rides to the Social Security office, and information on flight schools. While they lived across the street from al-Bayoumi, they had no furniture, they constantly played flight simulator games, and limousines picked them up for short rides in the middle of the night. Their neighbors later said they perceived them as strange. They later moved into the house of Abdussattar Shaikh, a friend of al-Bayoumi's, who was secretly working as an FBI informant at the time.
An October 2012 FBI report (declassified several years after it was written) named Fahad al-Thumairy, a Saudi Islamic Affairs official and King Fahd Mosque imam, as having worked with al-Bayoumi. The report also named another Saudi embassy official, Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, who allegedly had ordered al-Bayoumi and al-Thumairy to assist the hijackers; this man's name was not declassified, but was accidentally revealed when the FBI neglected to redact his name from a document filed in April 2020.
Al-Bayoumi claims he met them by happenstance, was being kind to fellow Muslims in need, and had no idea of their plans. Some FBI officials concluded that al-Bayoumi was an unwitting accomplice of the hijackers. As one explained: "We could not find any contact between him and terrorists, any involvement (with al-Qaeda). There was nothing to indicate he's any different from any of the hundreds of people who had contact with the hijackers, who were unwitting to the fact that they were going to be hijackers. It just wasn't there." But one former top FBI official told Newsweek: "We firmly believed that he had knowledge [of the 9/11 plot] and that his meeting with them that day was more than coincidence."
According to an FBI report from 2016, declassified by President Biden on September 12, 2021, the FBI said al-Thumairy "tasked" al-Bayoumi with providing assistance to the two hijackers. al-Thumairy also told al-Bayoumi that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were, "two very significant people," more than a year before the attacks. The report goes on to state that despite al-Bayoumi's characterization of the meeting with the two hijackers as coincidental, "Caisin Bin Don", a US citizen formerly known as Clayton Morgan, reported al-Bayoumi waiting by the window of the Mediterranean Gourmet Restaurant for the hijackers to arrive, and had a lengthy conversation with them in Arabic. Another witness reports al-Bayoumi was often saying the Islamic community needed to "take action" and that the community was "at jihad."
The declassified documents also released transcripts of FBI interviews with the-then-landlady of al-Bayoumi. She would be first interviewed by the FBI in October of 2001. The landlady to the 9/11 hijackers and new property manager of Parkwood Apartments, Holly Ratchford, disputes al-Bayoumi's claims the relationship with the eventual hijackers were fleeting and insignificant. In a 2026 interview with the BBC, Ratchford stated Bayoumi asked her on multiple occasions to find housing for the two. She also stated having seen them frequent Bayoumi's flat throughout the weeks, even saying she had cookies and tea with the pair. Ratchford said she originally denied them housing as they didn't meet the income criteria. The next day Bayoumi would take them to the nearest bank and open a bank account for them. To get around the income requirements, Bayoumi would co-sign their lease. Bayoumi's external income would more than double while the two stayed in San Diego and decreased after they left.
In June 2024, a federal court unsealed video footage dated between June and July 1999 and recorded over several days by al-Bayoumi in Washington D.C., showing various landmarks, notably the U.S. Capitol. In the video al-Bayoumi, who was allegedly accompanied by two Saudi diplomats, can be heard mentioning some "plan" and promising to someone "I will report you in detail what is there".
2001 arrest and release On June 14, 2001, Al-Sudairy was recorded at an address in Falls Church, Virginia, the same area where Hazmi, Midhar, Aulaqi, and Hani Hanjour established residence later in the evolution of the 9/11 plot. In July 2001, al-Bayoumi moved to Birmingham, England to pursue a Saudi Government-funded PhD at Aston University.
Ten days after the September 11 attacks, al-Bayoumi was arrested by British authorities working with the FBI, who had shared intelligence suggesting Bayoumi was one of the September 11 conspirators. He was held on an immigration charge while the FBI and Scotland Yard investigated him. According to an FBI report based on subsequently available information in 2016, and declassified in 2021, phone numbers linked to a known Tier 1 Terrorist Support Entity as well as numbers associated with the spiritual advisor to Osama bin Laden and Abu Zubaydah were found on al-Bayoumi's phone by Scotland Yard at the time. Most directly, the phone number of Mutaib Al-Sudairy, roommate of a key bin Laden logistics facilitator, Ziyad Khaleel, was found on his phone. Bayoumi called this number 5 times, each call coinciding with significant logistic support of the hijackers. Specifically,
on January 24–30, 2000 in the days before he first met the hijackers; the day immediately after Bayoumi met the hijackers in February 2000; on February 7, 2000 immediately after the apartment lease and living arrangements for Hazmi and Midhar had been finalized and funds fronted by Bayoumi. In Bayoumi's property in Birmingham, West Midlands Police investigators also found a crude sketch of an airplane and calculations which may have been for its descent, and a collection of home videos which included footage of Bayoumi meeting Hazmi and Mihdhar and of security measures at the U.S. Capitol. This evidence were labeled critical and immediately copied and passed to the FBI.
At Paddington Green station, Bayoumi was interrogated by Metropolitan Police detectives, who suspected that he may have been involved and were given some of the evidence from his home by the FBI. However, the interrogators were not shown the possibly-incriminating sketch and videos. The Terrorism Act 2000 stipulated that suspects must be charged or released within 7 days of arrest, and Bayoumi was released after the Department of Justice told the Metropolitan Police detectives assigned to Bayoumi that evidence for extradition to the US was insufficient. After his release from custody, Bayoumi returned to Aston University, where he left with a master's degree in management research on July 31, 2002 before returning to Saudi Arabia in August. He was given back all of the evidence which had been seized from his house, including the aircraft sketch and videos. His current whereabouts are unknown.