A 9/11 Story: 4. A Chance Meeting

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Swazish Shiri. I'm meeting Gospel Legends Fred Hammond to find out more about the man behind some of the most popular Gospel songs over the last 40 years. He'll be sharing with me what his faters meant to him through the highs and lows of his life. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get to your BBC podcasts. Birmingham, England. 10 days after 9-11.

1:04Omar Al-Bayumi is watching Saudi Arabia play Bahrain in a World Cup qualifier. The game's nearly over when Bayumi hears something at the door. It's officers from SO13, the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terror Branch. Other requests of the FBI, they've been secretly watching him for days. They're here to arrest him. He's suspected of being a 9-11 accomplice. Blue lights flashing. They drive for two hours to London. The law allows them to hold by Yumi for seven days. The clock is already ticking. The next day, the questioning begins.

2:08That's Bayumi. Before they go any further, he says he wants to talk to the embassy of Saudi Arabia. It's a pure amount. It's an unusual request, but it's an unusual case. The FBI had received allegations that Bayumi worked for Saudi intelligence, but they hadn't passed them on to British police. Detective Constable David Campbell notes that Bayumi is already spoken with the embassy, and that his lawyer is sitting next to him. Still, Bayumi won't agree to being filmed until he's spoken with the embassy. Bayumi helped two future hijackers settle in America.

3:12British detectives have one week to find out why. From intrigue on BBC Radio 4, this is a 9-11 story. I'm Jane McMullen, episode 4, a chance meeting. This interview has been recorded. When the interview resumes, it's audio only. The allegation is stark. Bayumi may have knowingly helped the 9-11 hijackers. Bayumi's response is just as stark. I don't have any idea about this situation, he says. Bayumi explains his background. He says he's working on a PhD in Birmingham.

4:13His wife and four kids have only just joined him from Saudi Arabia. We live in normal life. And just we moved to this house three days ago. Maybe now, a few days, four days. DC Campbell asks about San Diego, including his old apartment complex, Parkwood, where Holly baked those fresh cookies, where the hijackers lived too. But neither man makes any mention of them just yet. Before they wrap up for the night, Campbell wants Bayumi to think hard. And asks the central question. Do you know anything about the people who have committed this act of terrorism? It's barely audible, but Bayumi says no.

5:17Have you seen the photographs of people that may have been the hijackers? No. Quite definitely. The image even the names they have known. No faces, no names, and Bayumi says no knowledge of the men who carried out the attacks. That's his account. Campbell has just six more days to test it. This interview is being shared before. It doesn't take to come to school yet. Day two. Now, the questions are becoming more pointed. How few, at any stage, whilst you've been in America, students are guaranteed for anyone else? Something the FBI had told DC Campbell, that Bayumi signed as guarantor on the hijackers Parkwood lease.

6:26DC Campbell sharpens his question. Did you ever stand as guarantor for anyone at Parkwood apartments? Maybe I recommended somebody. Bayumi says. But he's not sure he ever took financial responsibility for anyone. For several minutes, they go round. Campbell asks for the names. Bayumi says he helps too many people to remember. Then, Campbell changes tack.

7:30Still, Bayumi says helping is just his way. The interview seems to be going nowhere. But Campbell keeps up the same line of questioning, and 45 minutes later, something shifts. I remember now, he says. Two guys from Mecca in Saudi Arabia. And he remembers a few details. They young, thin, no beards. One has a gap in his teeth. Then, Bayumi explains how they met. We were a couple of years, and we went to restaurant to eat.

8:31He and a friend were in an LA restaurant when they heard two people speaking Arabic. Bayumi says he went over and greeted them. He says the two friends wanted to learn English, but didn't know how to start. So he tells them he lives in San Diego. But if you look at how it works, something like that, it's just a colony. In Bayumi's telling, this is how it begins. A restaurant, a shared language, a phone number, a chance meeting. Campbell keeps pressing for the names. A few minutes later, they come. If it's one, they're off, I think. Uh-huh. And the second, the second one. I think Khalid. Khalid. Khalid. Okay, here, JLID.

9:32Yeah. Nawaf and Khalid, the first names of two of the hijackers on American Airlines flight 77, the one that crashed into the Pentagon. Campbell doesn't tell him that yet. Once the names are out, more comes. Days later, Bayumi says, the two men turned up at his mosque in San Diego, asking for him. They needed a place to live. He helped his fellow Saudis. And that's about it. In Bayumi's telling, his role was brief. The two men soon moved on. But that's not what the park would manage a holly told us. She saw Bayumi spend time with them. She thought they were friends. Back in the interrogation room, it's time to break for food and for Bayumi to pray.

10:37But those names, Nawaf and Khalid, hang in the air. Before the interviews are over, Bayumi volunteers something else. We had a comcorner at the World, I invite people for invitation. He has dozens of videotapes. Nawaf and Khalid might be on one of them. Yeah, I think so. This is an incredible moment. Just hours earlier, he couldn't remember their names. Now, he's pointing police towards a videotape that may show them at a gathering inside their apartment at Parkwood. That's the sound of a gathering by Umi organised inside the hijackers apartment at Parkwood in San Diego.

11:38This is the welcoming party. FBI Special Agent Danny Gonzales heard about back in episode three. Bayumi is given control of the machine. He winds forwards and backwards to find the two men. They're not there, he says. They try a different tape. Again, Bayumi says, there's nothing. The police move on. Years later, investigators will come back to the tapes and find very clearly that the hijackers are there. On day seven, after more than 10 hours of interviews, Campbell lays it out. The hijackers on flight 77.

12:41There's only two options. You've been a very unlucky, religious Muslim man. He's provided other Muslim men with assistance. Or that you are a terrorist. I'm very new. These people's aims come girls and you've assisted them. But providing them with their accommodation and help that you've done. And so far, you're a near-spelltony person. I check the chair crashed through so bad. You can't believe these people. No, Bayumi says. Ask anyone who knows me. And have anything with any hijacker. Or anyone who knows who he wants. Or he intends, for example, to do evil. Or to do some, some, or imagine people also. Just by talking or by saying or by, you know, by writing or something like that.

13:42I don't like this at all. I don't participate in it at all. At all. The interview is all but over. British police cannot hold Bayumi indefinitely. DC Campbell wants him sent to the US for further investigation. In San Diego, FBI Special Agent Danny Gonzalez expects the same thing. That's the normal course of business, yes. And did that happen? No. No, it didn't happen that way. In summer 2005, I blacked my way into a job editing a new British gangster film. And I'd unknowingly been employed by two of London's most notorious gang leaders.

14:45He crossed us, he'd get sorted out. We're serious people. I was stepping into a world where the lines between facts and fiction barely existed. Because the film they'd written was the story of their lives. And they were using it to change their future. But would it be possible to really leave criminality behind them? It was all good a week ago. I'm Lewis Albro. From BBC Radio 4 and Shadow World, this is Breaking the Cycle. Subscribe to Shadow World, breaking the cycle on BBC Sounds. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm meeting gospel legends Fred Hammond to find out more about the man behind some of the most popular gospel songs over the last 40 years. He'll be sharing with me what his faith has meant to him through the highs and lows of his life. Listen now by searching for the documentary, wherever you get to your BBC podcasts.

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