July 25, 2003	Friday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 24, 1424

RIYADH, July 24: A Saudi man named in the US congressional report released on Thursday as knowing two of the September 11, 2001, hijackers was not a Saudi government agent as some media reports have been portraying, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States has said in a press statement.

“Reports that Omar Al-Bayoumi is an agent of the Saudi government are baseless and not true,” Prince Bandar said in the statement.

Al-Bayoumi, who left the United States in April 2001, has also vehemently denied that he had helped the two hijackers and added he had been cleared by US and British investigators.

Al-Bayoumi was questioned by US and British law enforcement officials, and “I doubt that the FBI would have let him go had he been in any way implicated in the events of Sept 11,” Prince Bandar said.

“It is unfortunate that reports keep circulating in the media describing him as an agent of the Saudi government with attribution only to anonymous officials. This is blatantly false.”

“The Saudi government has not received any new information implicating Mr Al-Bayoumi nor has it received any requests from any friendly government to further question him,” he said. “Apparently, this is a case of someone simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time”.

The investigation report released on Thursday portrays ties between al-Bayoumi and the hijackers, while claiming the FBI failed to keep tabs on al-Bayoumi though it had learned he was a secret Saudi agent.