Some Saudi royals may have helped Osama: Report
WASHINGTON: International terrorist mastermind and prime suspect in the September 11 terror attacks in the US, Osama bin Laden, may have received help from some Saudi royals who reportedly are in league with him.
According to an article in the forthcoming issue of New Yorker magazine, some of the Saudi royals are in league with bin Laden and may have aided him with funds.
The story, filed by reputed investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, says several conversations between members of the Saudi Arabian royal family were electronically intercepted by the national security agency, a US government spy establishment, beginning as early as 1994.
The intercepts "demonstrated to analysts that by 1996 Saudi money was supporting Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida and other extremist groups". According to the report, the wiretaps show that by 1996, Saudi money was supporting al-Qaida and similar extremist groups in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yemen and throughout Central Asia and the Persian Gulf region.
The intercepts "depict a regime increasingly corrupt, alienated from the country's religious rank and file, and so weakened and frightened that it has brokered its future by channelling hundreds of millions of dollars in what amounts to protecton money to fundamentalist groups that wish to overthrow it", the report says.
The article, quoting current and former intelligence officials, reports that the instability of the Saudi regime is "the most immediate threat to American economic and political interests in the West Asia but the Bush administration, like the Clinton administration, is refusing to confront this reality".
( PTI )
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