US families of 9/11 victims seek answers about Saudi involvement

American families of the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks hope for answers about Saudi involvement in the incidents that killed thousands of people twenty years ago.

US President Joe Biden last week directed the Justice Department and other agencies to review and release certain documents related to the FBI's investigation of 9/11. The documents reportedly contain evidence of Saudi involvement in the strikes.

The families have for years pushed the US government to declassify and make public more information about 9/11, which was a series of strikes that killed nearly 3,000 people and caused about $10 billion worth of property and infrastructure damage in the United States.

US officials assert that the attacks were carried out by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists, 15 of them Saudi nationals, but many experts and independent researchers have raised questions about the official account.

They believe that rogue elements within the US government, such as former Vice President Dick Cheney, orchestrated or at least encouraged the 9/11 attacks in order to accelerate the US war machine and advance the Zionist agenda.

The first batch of certain documents related to the FBI’s investigation of the 9/11 attacks is expected to be released in the coming days, The Hill reported on Saturday. The process marks something of a culmination for thousands of families who lost loved ones 20 years ago.  They have fought for transparency.

“For the families it’s like an open wound that’s never healed,” said Terry Strada, whose husband died in the attacks and is the chairwoman of 9/11 Families United. “But the open wound of not knowing and having information withheld, that wound will heal. That chapter will close after this entire six-month process, if it’s successful.”

Brett Eagleson was 15 years old when he lost his father in the deadly attacks. He said he hoped Biden’s review might lift a veil of secrecy around Saudi Arabia’s role in the incidents.

“It's not time to celebrate yet,” Eagleson said. “But I think that it's an acknowledgement by the president of the United States that we have this struggle. He's personally intervening, he's making an executive order.”

“I think that is a win in and of itself that the federal government, the president of the United States acknowledges that yes, there are classified government documents related to the FBI's investigation into the Saudi Arabian government for 9/11,” he said.

Successive US administrations have refused to release the classified documents because they reportedly could expose a potential link between Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 attacks. Fifteen out of 19 alleged 9/11 attackers were Saudi nationals.

Biden pledged during the campaign to declassify and make public some documents related to the FBI’s 9/11 investigation.

Biden authorizes release of declassified 9/11 documents

Last month nearly 1,800 September 11 victims’ relatives and survivors called on US President to skip memorial events of the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks this year unless he declassifies US documents detailing Saudi Arabia’s role in the deadly attacks.

Several US senators and House lawmakers have been calling for the disclosure of 28 pages that purportedly contain evidence of Saudi involvement in financing and backing the alleged 9/11 hijackers. The pages were extracted from a 2002 Congressional inquiry into the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Dr. Kevin Barrett, an American academic who has been studying the events of 9/11 since late 2003, once told Press TV that the reason that the classified pages are still hidden from the American people and the world is that an investigation into “the links revealed between the Saudi government and these patsies” will reveal that 19 hijackers were actually trained by the CIA in the United States.

The researcher said the document “utterly annihilates the official version and it reveals that 9/11 was not an attack by a rogue group of terrorists, but it was actually a state-sponsored operation.”

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk