New 9/11 Videos Expose Bayoumi’s Extremist Ties
The BBC’s Panorama and Radio 4 unveiled new footage implicating Omar al‑Bayoumi, a pivotal figure in the $1 trillion lawsuit by 9/11 families against Saudi Arabia, as a long‑time extremist.
The videos were seized by the FBI days after the attacks and show Bayoumi embracing Anwar al‑Awlaki—who later led al‑Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula—in a paintballing session near San Diego in the late 1990s.
In a second clip, Bayoumi and Awlaki play paintball with a Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs official, a scene that the investigators have called a “training for jihad.”
A handwritten plane diagram found among Bayoumi’s belongings lists the height‑distance calculations a pilot would need to guide an aircraft to a target on the ground. The document is considered the “smoking gun” evidence the families’ lawyers have secured in court.
Despite having this material, Bayoumi was never charged. FBI reports indicate the evidence never reached the UK investigators who interrogated him and the 9/11 Commission never reviewed the diagram, paintball video, or other seized data.
The court has now deemed the case can proceed, and public disclosure of the documents, under a 2022 executive order, has opened a new public debate around Saudi complicity and the marginal treatment of Bayoumi’s evidence.
The exposed footage challenges the narrative that Bayoumi was a “peace‑lover” and raises questions about the FBI and DOJ’s handling of potentially critical evidence and the broader lessons for post‑9/11 intelligence oversight.
Grainy images from a paintballing session filmed by Bayoumi – with Anwar al‑Awlaki top right
