Guantanamo prisoner says Saudi ‘royal’ involved in 9/11 attacks

Transcript alleges unnamed member of Saudi royal family was part of an effort to recruit an Al Qaeda bombmaker

A newly released transcript claims an accused al Qaeda bomb-maker told military officials at the US base in Guantanamo Bay that he believed an unnamed member of the Saudi royal family was part of an effort to recruit him for extremist acts before the 9/11 attacks.

Ghassan Abdallah al-Sharbi, who went to college in Arizona, said a religious figure in Saudi Arabia used the term “your highness” during a telephone conversation with a man, just before urging him to return to the US and take part in a plot against the country that would involve learning to fly a plane, Associate Press reported.

Al-Sharbi divulged and described details of the conversation in June to the Periodic Review Board at Guantanamo. The Pentagon on Thursday posted a transcript, with parts blacked out, on the website of the board, which includes representatives from six US agencies and departments.

The statement 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.

Al-Sharbi said he listened as the “religious figure” spoke to the man --whom al-Sharbi believes was a royal — as they discussed  his  qualifications for returning to the US for jihad -- which hints indirectly to the 9/11 incident. “I remember, ‘yes, your highness, yes your highness,’ and he was talking to him about me,” he recalled the clerics conversation on the phone.

The September 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.

This article originally appeared on The Seattle Times.