The families of some of the victims killed during the attacks of September 11, 2001 who worked for the Bond Trading Company of Howard Lutnick, now a trade secretary, exhorts him to help extradite a Saudi national potentially involved in the attacks while he is preparing to engage in economic talks with the Kingdom.
In a letter to Mr. Lutnick, obtained by the New York Times, the families representing the hundreds of employees of the company, Cantor Fitzgerald, who died in the recently non-sealed attack showing that Omar Al-Bayoumi, a Saudi intelligence agent, had links with the attackers.
Mr. Lunick is himself a parent of a victim of the terrorist attack; His brother, who also worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, died. And Cantor, whose offices lasted the 101st to the 105th floors of the Northern Tower of the World Trade Center, lost more employees than any other company affected by attacks.
The letter comes while Mr. Lunick plans to accompany President Trump in Saudi Arabia as part of a next trip to the Middle East. Families have urged Mr. Lunick to assert that Mr. Al-Bayoumi is brought to justice in any discussion on the strengthening of the United States’s economic partnership with the Kingdom. Relatives have written that his appointment “gives us renewed hope” to determine the full truth about the attacks and which was responsible.
“You are in a unique position to emphasize that such a partnership must start with responsibility and justice, ensuring that Omar al-Bayoumi is given to the United States to cope with justice in the United States court,” reads the letter, which had more than 150 signatories.
“This question transcends politics; this is a question of principle,” continued the letter. “It is a question of honoring the life that we have lost and of knowing if the country which sent them to their tragic death will never be held responsible.”
Managers of the Commerce Department refused to comment. A person who knows the thought of Mr. Lutnick said that he had seen the letter and deeply appreciated the thoughts of family members.
Mr. Lutnick, who was managing director of the company at the time of the attack, lost 658 employees, including his best friend. In a social media position last year, he told how he put down his son for his first children’s garden day when his phone continued to ring and disconnect while his brother, Gary, tried to call for goodbye.
Cantor Fitzgerald continued to support families affected by attacks, which gives them $ 180 million. He also paid for their health care for 10 years and created a rescue fund.
“I promised to take care of all families,” he wrote. “They have become part of my family.”
There was a dissent within the company on the way in which an American Airlines settlement allowance above the plane which struck the North Tower tower of the World Trade Center, making it collapse, reported Fox Business. Mr. Lutnick told the leaders of the company in 2014 that money was to be widely spent among the partners of the company, as opposed to the members of the family of people killed. We do not know if this is how the money was finally disbursed. Mr. Lunick refused to comment on Fox’s affairs for his article at the time.
For years, information on the potential participation of Mr. Al-Bayoumi in the September 11 attacks was obscured.
Last summer, a mine of evidence seized by the British authorities of the home of Mr. Al-Bayoumi him to the game pirates of September 11 Qaeda was made public for the first time.
More than a week after the attacks, British police officers made a descent into the house of Mr. Al-Bayoumi, who had met two of the pirates of the September 11 in Los Angeles shortly after their arrival at the beginning of 2000. Among the elements that the police seized were a pad on which Mr. Al-Bayoumi had sketched a plane in blue ink, above which he had written an equation mathematics.
British authorities have given the equipment to the FBI for its investigation into attacks. But we don’t know what happened to the drawing after that. It was not shared with the Commission of September 11, a bipartite group of legislators and experts responsible for the drafting of the final account of the attacks. In its 2004 report, the Commission described Mr. Al-Bayoumi as an “improbable candidate for clandestine participation with Islamic extremists”.
None of the new evidence of Mr. Al-Bayoumi’s home has proven to conclude that the Saudi government has enabled the attacks, but this adds to a growing circumstantial case.
Families quoted a report released on “60 minutes” last month, revealing that Mr. Al-Bayoumi filmed the Capitol before the attacks.
In the letter, families stressed that such information had been in the hands of the FBIs of weeks after the attack, but was retained to the American public and the Commission of September 11 for years.
“This betrayal is astounding,” said the letter. “But now we have the opportunity for a new start.”
