While the families of 9/11 victims called for the declassification of evidence that members of the Saudi monarchy helped fund the attacks, a Saudi newspaper turned the table, blaming the United States for the worst terrorist massacre on its soil. Saudi legal expert Katib Al-Shammari, writing in the London-based Saudi daily Al- Hayat on April 28, charged that the U.S. carried out the 9/11 attacks while placing blame on others, beginning with al-Qaida and the Taliban, then shifting to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and now Saudi Arabia.
“The U.S. created, in public opinion, an obscure enemy – terrorism – which became what American presidents blamed for all their mistakes,” Shammari wrote.
Excerpts of the article were translated from Arabic by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
Shammari said the effort to release evidence of purported Saudi involvement in 9/11 is part of standard U.S. policy of using archival documents as leverage against various countries.
“Those who follow American policy see that it is built upon the principle of advance planning and future probabilities. This is because it occasionally presents a certain topic to a country that it does not wish [to bring up] at that time but [that it is] reserving in its archives as an ace to play [at a later date] in order to pressure that country,” he wrote.
He charged that the Americans decided not to remove Saddam in the 1990s because they preferred to keep him as a bargaining chip with Gulf states.
The article was published on the eve of visit President Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia in April. At the time, Congress was debating the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which would allow the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue the Saudi government for damages.
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Also in April 2016, the New York Times reported a 2002 congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks had found that Saudi officials living in the United States at the time had a hand in the plot.
As WND reported in April, Saudi Arabia is threatening to sell off $750 billion in U.S. assets if Congress passes the legislation allowing the families of 9/11 victims to sue.
The Saudi financial threat is renewing a push to declassify 28 pages of the 838-page congressional report about the 9/11 attacks. The critical pages are locked in a secure basement room at the Capitol. A co-chair of the 9/11 inquiry, former Forida Sen. Bob Graham, claims the classified pages show a link that goes all the way to the top of the Saudi government. Graham charges the Saudi government’s funding of terrorist groups continues to this day.
In his article, Shammari said there’s “proof” that the U.S. government carried out 9/11.
“September 11 is one of (the) winning cards in the American archives, because all the wise people in the world who are experts on American policy and who analyze the images and the videos agree unanimously that what happened in the (Twin) Towers was a purely American action, planned and carried out within the U.S.
Echoing the charges of “9/11 truthers,” Shammari said, “Proof of this is the sequence of continuous explosions that dramatically ripped through both buildings.
“Expert structural engineers demolished them with explosives, while the planes crashing [into them] only gave the green light for the detonation – they were not the reason for the collapse.”
He said the U.S. used 9/11 to “launch a new age of global armament” and charged “the “nature of the U.S. is that it cannot exist without an enemy.”
After World War II, he wrote, the U.S. created the Cold War, then, when it ended, “began to see Muslims as their new enemy.”
“This will never end until it accomplishes the goals it has set for itself,” Shammari said of the U.S.
“So why not let these achievements be credited to the American administration, while insurance companies pay for the damages, whether domestic or foreign? This, my dear Arab and Muslim, is the policy of the American archives.”