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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Al-Qaeda bomb-maker in Guantanamo says a Saudi royal helped recruit him to jihad

Sep 17, 2016 4:45 pm By Robert Spencer

Although Ghassan Abdallah al-Sharbi is hardly an unimpeachable source, there is nothing implausible about this claim.

guantanamo

“Guantanamo prisoner says terrorism recruiter referred to Saudi royal in conversation about jihad,” Associated Press, September 17, 2016:

An accused al-Qaida bomb-maker who went to college in Arizona told military officials at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that he believed an unnamed member of the Saudi royal family was part of an effort to recruit him for violent extremist acts before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a newly released transcript.

Ghassan Abdallah al-Sharbi said a religious figure in Saudi Arabia used the term “your highness” during a telephone conversation with a man, just before urging al-Sharbi to return to the U.S. and take part in a plot against the U.S. that would involve learning to fly a plane.

The Sept. 11 commission found there was no evidence to indicate that the Saudi government as an institution or Saudi senior officials individually had supported the attacks, and the kingdom’s government has consistently denied it had any role in the plot.

It was early 2001, and al-Sharbi had only recently returned from the United States, where he had taken some flight school courses in Phoenix with two men who would become hijackers in the 9/11 attacks.

Al-Sharbi described the conversation in June to the Periodic Review Board, which assesses whether Guantanamo prisoners can be released. The Pentagon on Thursday posted a transcript, with parts blacked out, on the website of the board, which includes representatives from six U.S. agencies and departments.

The statement is convoluted and lacks important details, such as whether the “religious figure” might be close to any Saudi officials. It does not indicate who the Saudi royal might be. The term can be used for thousands of members of the Saudi royal family; al-Sharbi did not say he met the man.

Al-Sharbi also appears to be struggling with illness. He tells the board he had just come from the detainee hospital, is “really exhausted, and nauseous and lethargic,” and uses what is described as a “manual breathing device.”

His statement adds to a list of suggestive but hardly definitive clues about possible involvement by members of the Saudi establishment in the Sept. 11 attacks, in which 17 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi.

The Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to comment on the al-Sharbi transcript. In the past, the Saudis have pointed to the 9/11 Commission, FBI investigations and other probes that found no Saudi government or royal family involvement in the attacks.

Those denials have not ended speculation about possible Saudi involvement. Congress recently approved legislation that would allow 9/11 families to sue the kingdom for any role in the plot.

Al-Sharbi says he listened as the “religious figure” spoke to the man — whom al-Sharbi believes was a royal — as they discussed al-Sharbi’s qualifications for returning to the U.S. for jihad. “I remember, ‘yes, your highness, yes your highness,’ and he was talking to him about me,” al-Sharbi said….

Al-Sharbi attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, from 1999-2000, according to the review board website.

In the transcript, the prisoner described living with various Americans, including a Phoenix police officer, in Arizona and California before returning to Saudi Arabia in the summer of 2000.

After telling the “religious figure” that he had some practice on a flight simulator and could learn to fly more easily than others, al-Sharbi says he agreed to return to the U.S and they began to discuss details. But al-Sharbi never went, for reasons that are unclear in the transcript.

The review board profile says al-Sharbi went to Afghanistan in the summer of 2001, trained with al-Qaida and then went to Pakistan, where he learned how to make remote-controlled explosive devices and teach the skill to others. He was captured there in a house with Abu Zubaydah, whom the U.S. has called an al-Qaida “facilitator.” He, too, is confined at Guantanamo.

When captured, the FBI found a buried a cache of documents nearby, including an envelope from the Saudi Embassy in Washington that contained al-Sharbi’s flight certificate, according to a document known as File 17, which was declassified earlier this year and names people the hijackers were in contact with in the United States before the attacks, including diplomats of the kingdom….

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Filed Under: Al-Qaeda, Guantanamo, Saudi Arabia Tagged With: Ghassan Abdallah al-Sharbi


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Comments

  1. Angemon says

    Sep 17, 2016 at 5:34 pm

    Ghassan Abdallah al-Sharbi said a religious figure in Saudi Arabia used the term “your highness” during a telephone conversation with a man, just before urging al-Sharbi to return to the U.S. and take part in a plot against the U.S. that would involve learning to fly a plane.

    While this is, at best, circumstantial evidence and hearsay, it’s perfectly within the realm of possibilities. Wikileaks cables link the Saudi Royal family with funding terrorist organizations.

  2. Georg says

    Sep 17, 2016 at 7:02 pm

    Unreal.

    There is absolutely no way, no how, these guys perpetrated this act without assistance from elites. Dragging it into the open and getting the establishment to speak its name will be a revolting fight the people must engage in ceaselessly. We’ve bumped into the line of demarcation between the little guys and the big guys so it’ll be hell on wheels to take it on with success.

  3. West says

    Sep 18, 2016 at 2:19 am

    911 was either a outright false flag operation lead by high level corrupt Political , Military and Intelligence types in the USA using Saudi Arabia as the handlers of the Jihadists or it was Saudi Arabia that wanted to hurt the US and the US for some strange reason is protecting them, I place my money on the first.
    Its actually not that difficult to find Americans willing to hurt Americans as you think. There are what I call Ideologues, people who are prepared to do anything to serve a politicall goal, eg look at Iraq, we know today that the Iraq war was only Chapter 1 of a much bigger policy or Geopolitics in that part of the World, after that Lybia now Syria and then comes Lebanon or Iran.
    WAKE UP PEOPLE

  4. West says

    Sep 18, 2016 at 2:35 am

    Imagine you own a business and a worker is stealing, hes caught multiple times but the manager who catches him always lets him get off as if nothing happened, what would be your conclusion about the managers involvement?!?
    Why is the USA protecting a country that did 911?
    Why?!?
    Itvis only logicall if it was a conspiracy that the US was very much involved in. You just cant believe that the US would do it to itself, the US does it to Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Panama, Ukraine, Serbia, Irak, Haiti, Cuba etc. etc., what makes you think it will never be directed at yourselves. The Americans doing these things are basically fascists, an attack on the US to unleash the full military might of the US on whoever they want to target YOU BET.
    It was so easy, they used the Saudis as the handlers and financers of the Jihadist terrorists, all they had to do was put it in their heads and point thek in the right direction, if anybody at the FBI, NSA etc detected it they could claim it was a training OP or a undercover OP, it wasnt hard at all with people in place at high levels in America who secretlt did treason to make it happen.911 was necessary for everything that we see now to be possible.

    • Georg says

      Sep 18, 2016 at 4:06 am

      I don’t think 9/11 benefited the US, so we disagree. I think going into Iraq was among the most damaging foreign policy decisions in our history.

      The Bush Admin had something bordering on a conspiracy to get us into Iraq, it’s worth checking out the paper “Clean Break” which was leaked. The book Hubris has many of the details concerning the cherry-picking of dismal sources and spin so as to support a narrative for war which was practically baseless.

      However, suggesting the United States would effect something like 9/11 just to invade Iraq is ridiculous. For one thing, the government is pretty bad at keeping secrets about anything, and keeping something like a government plot to perpetrate 9/11 hidden is impossible. But it’s a very popular theory among Muslims… Which would make it bizarre so many cheered on 9/11. Turns out it’s not bizarre though as both benefit those who hate the US. Seeing the towers struck and 3,000 Americans slaughtered sat well with them and made people like Mohsin Hamid smile. However, the global admonition and sinking reality that it was an indefensible act led them to the cowardly about face where they decided, after all the heat, that perhaps they didn’t do it after all and that… uh… the US did it! So they got their cake and ate it too.

      Except that an increasing number of people are wise to Islamic deceit

      At the moment the government can’t tell Saudi Arabia where to go because we are dependent on them for energy. There is probably also an enormous amount of corruption between our business/government leaders and those controlling access to Saudi oil fields. Think of whackos like the Koch brothers who’d just as soon send the world to hell to make a buck and empower themselves. The US government can’t presently risk destablising KSA as the elites are sadly moderate compared with many of the Koranic lunatics who’d love to be in power, as demonstrated with the Siege of Mecca in 1979. Check out some of the Salafists on their airwaves and suddenly Wahabbis seem like smerfs. It’s an unforgiveable situation the US has gotten itself into with these satanists and it’s up to our people to force out governments who don’t put us on a trajectory to get us disconnected from KSA.

      cliff notes: The United States cannot presently function without Saudi oil and so our behavior toward them is confined accordingly.

      • west says

        Sep 18, 2016 at 6:45 pm

        Ofcourse it benefited the USA just which USA, normal joe usa with his truck in middle america got nothing, black amerixa got nothing, latina america got nothing, native american ofcourse got nothing, but a very specific elite that is very well connected got everything Money power respect medals diplomatic passports private jets.
        Just look at halliburton, boeing, lockheed, GE etc.,
        The poor sent their sond and daughters to serve and many came back without legs arms genitals and anything else ripped off by ied blasts, over 3000 died for this bullshit. The terrorists now rule vast stretches of land and have oil fields etc.
        I am saying that the muslims absolutely did 911 NO DOUBT but the USA had many chances to intervene and stop it and didnt, Operation Able danger discovered 911 hijacker 1 year before 911 on us soil and still no action to stop them, there was probably more that is unknown, things like surveillance, handlers etc.
        You say it cant be kept secret you are mistaken, the us keeps things secret all the time, whoever talks goes to prison or has a “car accident”, maybe they go to a bar get drunk and wake up next to a gay boy and pictures are emailed to them, its not hard to make people keep quiet, and even if they spoke up who would believe them. 911 was necessary to unleash the Army to effect plans of reorganisong the political landscape of the middle east so that the USA could achieve multiple objectives 1 Oil, 2 Regime change, 3 protect israel is connected to #2, 3 project force, 4 test new and already established weapons and tactics, 5 help sunni islam of saudi arabia be dominant 6 politicians gain power over media and civilians byblessening freedom of speech, privacy rights etc.
        I understand why a american would have difficulty accepting his country did this, if it is true you might as well put a bullet in your head because what kind of country is that then, constutution?
        Supreme court?
        democracy?
        Nobody doubts the USA does it to other nations even democratic ones that atleast we can agree on.

  5. Dustin Koellhoffer says

    Sep 18, 2016 at 10:51 am

    Have people forgotten that Osama bin Laden was a Saudi royal?

  6. RK says

    Sep 18, 2016 at 6:36 pm

    gee didn’t and doesn’t Hillary get LOTS of money from Saudi- WHY YES SHE DOES! – that should tell everyone all we need to know about her!

    VOTE TRUMP, PERIOD!

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