The allegation is founded on "every FBI report that we have been able to obtain," says Sean Carter, the lead attorney on the case, adding that "nearly 5,000 pages of evidence submitted of record" in the case back up the claim, the New York Post reports.
"The dry run reveals more of the fingerprints of the Saudi government," New Yorker Kristen Breitweiser, whose spouse died in the World Trade Center 16 years ago today, told the Hoover Institution’s Paul Sperry. "These guys were Saudi government employees for years and were paid by the Saudi government … in fact, the Saudi Embassy paid for their plane tickets for the dry run," she said.
The individuals allegedly working for the Saudi Kingdom to rehearse the dry run were Saudi nationals Mohammed al-Qudhaerring and Hamdan al-Shalawi, according to the plaintiff’s most recent court filing.
The dry run allegedly occurred in November 1999 on an America West flight to the nation’s capital. According to FBI case files cited in court documents, "After they boarded the plane in Phoenix, they began asking the flight attendants technical questions about the flight that the flight attendants found suspicious. When the plane was in flight, al-Qudhaeein asked where the bathroom was; one of the flight attendants pointed him to the back of the plane."
"Nevertheless, al-Qudhaeein went to the front of the plane and attempted on two occasions to enter the cockpit," the file adds.
Attorney Sean Carter of the Cozen O’Connor law firm continued: "We’ve long asserted that there were longstanding and close relationships between Al Qaeda and the religious components of the Saudi government."
According to Sperry, "the FBI also confirmed that Qudhaeein’s and Shalawi’s airline tickets for the pre-9/11 dry run were paid for by the Saudi Embassy." The FBI had suspected Qudhaeein was a Saudi intelligence asset, Sperry reports, who had trained in Afghanistan where he learned how to handle explosives.
