Explosive document

9/11 file: Should the USA have attacked the Saudis?

Did Fahad al-Thumairy and Omar al-Bayoumi help the 9/11 bombers on behalf of Saudi Arabia? The case is in court.(Bild: Krone KREATIV/picturedesk)

23 years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an explosive court document shows how deeply involved official Saudi Arabia was in the machinations of al-Qaeda. Should the Bush administration have attacked the Saudis militarily - not Iraq? Krone+ knows more.

The explosive document is 71 pages long, bears the file reference ECF No. 9368 and is in the New York District Court. The information it contains allows only one conclusion to be drawn: without the active help of the Saudis, Osama Bin Laden's terrorist organization would never have been able to carry out its plans to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This was first reported by the renowned US magazine "The Atlantic".

All this stands in stark contradiction to the previously valid US foreign policy doctrine, according to which it was primarily Saddam Hussein's Iraq that supported al-Qaeda financially, structurally and in terms of personnel. Was the "war on terror" proclaimed by US President George W. Bush based on a mistake?