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Twenty-five years after the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil that killed nearly 3,000 people, newly unsealed evidence in the ongoing lawsuit brought by 9/11 victims’ families has exposed explosive new details about long-buried connections between a central suspect, senior Saudi government figures, and future al-Qaeda leadership — along with repeated failures by the FBI to disclose critical evidence to investigators, prosecutors, and the official independent inquiry into the attacks.

At the center of the $1 trillion civil suit is Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national who moved to San Diego in 1994 claiming to be an English language student. Court records show Bayoumi quickly abandoned his studies to focus on organizing religious events, and his name was found on the apartment lease of two of the 19 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, who crashed a plane into the Pentagon. For decades, Bayoumi has denied any ties to extremism or being a Saudi intelligence asset, claims that the newly public video evidence directly contradicts.

The BBC has obtained and verified never-before-seen video footage that the FBI acquired within days of the September 11, 2001 attacks. One clip, filmed in January 1998, captures Bayoumi embracing Anwar al-Awlaki, who would later rise to become the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula before being killed in a 2011 CIA drone strike. A second video, recorded between 1997 and 1998 near San Diego, shows Bayoumi, Awlaki, and an official from Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs participating in a military-style paintball exercise. Participants are seen wearing military fatiguges, practicing urban combat drills, and shouting “Allahu Akbar” during simulated charges, with Bayoumi addressing Awlaki with the honorific title “Sheikh Anwar.”

Additional footage also documents multiple private meetings between Bayoumi and Ministry of Islamic Affairs officials, including a public outing at SeaWorld where Bayoumi explicitly positioned himself to be recorded alongside the Saudi representatives. Established in 1993, the Ministry was long known to be dominated by hard-line Sunni clerics who exported radical Islamist ideology globally, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build mosques and place ideological operatives across the United States.

The explosive video evidence is not the only suppressed piece of evidence unearthed by the BBC’s joint investigation with Panorama and Radio 4, which reviewed thousands of declassified documents, court records, and interviewed dozens of former FBI agents and investigators involved in the case. When British Metropolitan Police arrested Bayoumi at his home in Birmingham, UK, just 10 days after the 9/11 attacks, officers seized more than 80 videotapes, thousands of pages of documents, and a handwritten diagram of an airplane accompanied by a mathematical descent equation written in Bayoumi’s own handwriting. Legal representatives for the 9/11 families describe the diagram as the long-sought “smoking gun” that proves Bayoumi had prior knowledge of the attack plot: the handwritten numbers calculate the altitude and distance required for a pilot to crash a plane into a fixed ground target. A federal judge overseeing the lawsuit ruled in 2023 that the document, on its face, connects Bayoumi to advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Bayoumi claimed in 2021 court testimony that he collected random equations and could not recall writing the diagram.

Within 48 hours of the seizure, copies of the plane diagram were delivered to the FBI’s liaison at the London police station where Bayoumi was being held, and passed between three senior FBI agents. Yet the British detectives interrogating Bayoumi were never informed of the diagram’s existence, nor were they briefed to question him about the paintball video or his ties to Awlaki. When Bayoumi’s seven-day detention window expired, U.S. Department of Justice officials rejected British investigators’ recommendation to extradite Bayoumi to the U.S. to face charges, claiming there was insufficient evidence — even though the critical evidence had been intentionally withheld from the prosecution team. Bayoumi was released in September 2001, and he has never been prosecuted.

Multiple FBI agents interviewed by the BBC confirmed a pattern of deliberate evidence suppression spanning field offices. The diagram was couriered to the FBI’s New York field office, the lead agency for the 9/11 investigation, but no formal analysis report has ever been uncovered. Only one reference to the diagram exists in declassified FBI files, created 11 years after it was seized. The San Diego FBI field office, which was actively investigating Bayoumi’s local activities including his ties to the hijackers, repeatedly requested copies of all evidence seized in Birmingham but never received most of the materials. Rick Lambert, who led the San Diego 9/11 investigation, told the BBC that New York refused to comply with repeated requests, and that early access to the evidence could have allowed investigators to uncover the full plot network much faster.

The paintball video faced a similar fate: a copy was sent to New York and viewed by agents, but it was never mentioned in official summaries of Bayoumi’s connections to extremism, and his long-standing relationship with Awlaki was omitted from all internal 2002 FBI and DOJ memos that otherwise noted Bayoumi’s anti-American and jihadist writings. Jeffrey Breinholt, former deputy director of counterterrorism at the Department of Justice who oversaw post-9/11 terrorism prosecutions, told the BBC that Bayoumi was initially identified as a high-priority candidate for charges, but the New York U.S. Attorney’s Office never submitted a prosecution proposal for approval. Breinholt noted that both the plane diagram and paintball video would have been more than enough evidence to secure a conviction on material support for terrorism charges, adding “we’ve convicted people for less.”

Investigators also faced explicit political roadblocks when trying to question Saudi officials connected to Bayoumi. In 2001, Lambert’s San Diego team requested permission to interview multiple Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs officials in the U.S. whom they suspected of coordinating Bayoumi’s support to the hijackers. Permission was denied by FBI headquarters and the U.S. State Department. The following year, the Los Angeles FBI field office faced the same block when requesting to interview a Saudi religious diplomat who met Bayoumi immediately after his first meeting with Hazmi and Mihdhar. The State Department declined to comment on the BBC’s inquiry.

The pattern of suppression extended to the 9/11 Commission, the independent congressional inquiry tasked with producing a full public account of the attacks. When the Commission interviewed Bayoumi in Riyadh in 2003, he had returned to Saudi Arabia following his release, and the interview was held in the presence of Saudi secret police, who later explicitly requested that Bayoumi be cleared of any wrongdoing. The final 2004 Commission report effectively exonerated Bayoumi, describing him as “obliging and gregarious” and concluding there was no evidence of extremist ties. But the BBC has confirmed that multiple Commission staff objected to the conclusion that Bayoumi was “unlikely” to have ties to Islamist extremists, and the final report was revised to attribute the claim only to “our investigators who have dealt directly with him.” Critically, the Commission was never given access to the plane diagram, the paintball video, or any of the other evidence seized by British police. Commission executive director Philip Zelikow declined to answer specific questions about the suppressed evidence, noting that the Commission’s findings had been reviewed twice by U.S. government bodies and that the panel was open about its uncertainties.

The unsealed evidence comes as the long-running civil lawsuit brought by 9/11 families against the Saudi government moves forward, after a 2018 court ruling allowed the case to proceed and a 2021 executive order from former President Joe Biden ordered the declassification of thousands of 9/11 investigation files. Bayoumi and the Saudi government have never responded to the BBC’s requests for comment, and both have repeatedly denied any involvement in or prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, calling all allegations of complicity categorically false. The FBI has also declined to comment on the BBC’s findings, while the DOJ said it could not comment on 25-year-old decisions involving staff who no longer work at the agency.

A week of escalating open conflict between the United States and Iran has sent ripples through global energy markets and heightened fears of a wider regional confrontation, after a six-week ceasefire formally expired last month and fighting reignited rapidly. The latest cycle of violence sparked last Sunday, when US forces resumed targeted strikes against Iranian assets just days after the truce ended — breaking a period of relative calm that had failed to translate into lasting diplomatic progress after six months of ongoing war that began in February.

On Saturday, US Central Command (Centcom) publicly released combat footage documenting recent US strikes on oil tankers linked to Iran. The strike operation came one day after Washington confirmed it had targeted the vessels in retaliation for Iranian attacks on US warships operating in regional waters. The BBC has reached out to Centcom for additional detail on the strikes, but no further comment has been provided as of publication.

Top Iranian officials have issued sharp, urgent warnings in response to the US actions, promising severe retaliation as tensions spike. Iran’s top nuclear and diplomatic negotiator has cautioned that any further US attacks will be met with “a faster, heavier, and more painful response” that will reshape the conflict. Speaking Sunday through Iranian state media, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf emphasized that Washington must recognize “before it is too late” that the “rules of the game have changed” amid the escalating hostilities.

In a separate development reported by Iranian state media Sunday, the Iranian Navy claimed it had attacked a US remote-controlled unmanned vessel that attempted to enter Iranian territorial waters near the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz. Centcom spokesperson Captain Tim Hawkins rejected the assertion outright, telling the Associated Press that the claim from Iranian state media is “a total lie.”

US leaders have doubled down on their own aggressive rhetoric in response to Iranian warnings. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a blunt threat via social media Saturday, stating: “It’s simple: if Iran shoots at US ships, we will destroy (and sink) their oil tankers.” US President Donald Trump, who is facing political pressure ahead of November’s midterm elections tied to soaring domestic energy costs, has downplayed the duration of the renewed conflict, claiming this week that the expanded fighting will not last “too long” — a repeated talking point he and his administration have used since the war began six months ago.

Months of bilateral negotiations between Washington and Tehran have failed to produce a durable ceasefire or comprehensive peace agreement, and there are currently few indicators that a new diplomatic breakthrough is imminent. The 40-kilometer Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical chokepoint for global oil and natural gas exports, has remained effectively closed to most commercial traffic since the start of the war, giving Iran significant strategic leverage over global energy markets. Tehran has repeatedly stated it will not cede partial control over the waterway, while Trump has insisted the strait must remain “open” and has deployed US military assets to assist commercial vessels navigating the southern alternate route.

The closure and ongoing conflict around the strait has already driven a sharp spike in global energy prices, creating political headwinds for Trump ahead of the November midterms. As of Friday, the average retail price of one gallon of diesel in the US hit $5.85, a massive jump from the $3.71 average recorded one year prior. On Sunday, US Energy Secretary Chris sought to ease market and public anxiety, telling CNN that approximately 9 million barrels of oil are now moving through the strait daily, when combined with volumes moving through regional overland pipelines. Wright noted that current flows are “probably two-thirds or more of pre-conflict levels,” which could help ease upward pressure on global energy prices. In an additional interview with ABC This Week Sunday, Wright added that US consumers can expect gas prices to begin declining as peak summer travel demand fades following the upcoming Labor Day holiday.

Diplomatic efforts to end the years-long war in Ukraine have entered a new active phase, as two special U.S. envoys completed closed-door negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow Saturday and prepare to travel to Kyiv Sunday for follow-up talks, senior U.S. officials have confirmed.

Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, top negotiators appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump, held three hours of private talks at Putin’s official Kremlin residence in central Moscow, where they discussed “substantive plans for next steps” toward ending the conflict, the White House said in a statement. While full details of those proposals have not yet been released, U.S. officials note a formal public announcement is expected within the coming weeks as international momentum for a negotiated resolution builds.

This trip marks the first time that Trump’s lead negotiators will visit the Ukrainian capital since efforts to broker a ceasefire began. In a preliminary confidence-building measure, both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have agreed to a temporary three-day halt to strikes targeting each other’s capital cities. As negotiations unfolded in Moscow, Zelenskyy publicly reaffirmed his readiness to hold “a substantive conversation” on a potential path to peace.

Russian state media confirmed the closed-door nature of Saturday’s talks, and a senior Russian advisor offered a largely positive assessment of the discussion. Yuri Ushakov, foreign policy advisor to Putin, called the negotiations “constructive, extremely frank,” adding that the agenda extended beyond the Ukraine crisis to include discussions of economic cooperation and potential large-scale mutually beneficial projects between Russia and the United States. Ushakov also noted that the Russian side highlighted what it called “tangible advances” by Russian forces in the combat zone, and all participants agreed any deal must address “the root causes of the conflict.”

That framing of Russian military advances contrasts with open-source assessments of the conflict trajectory: even amid recent escalations of long-range missile and drone strikes across Ukraine, Russian ground forces have made only incremental gains through most of the war, while suffering massive personnel casualties. Russia continues to occupy roughly one-fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory, territory seized shortly after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The visit from the U.S. envoys comes amid a recent intensification of cross-border aerial attacks from both sides. Ukraine has reported critical shortages of air defense interceptor missiles, leaving it struggling to fend off incoming Russian ballistic missile strikes. For its part, Kyiv has stepped up long-range attacks targeting Russian economic infrastructure, most notably key oil production and storage facilities.

It remains unclear exactly how the U.S. negotiators will travel from Moscow to Kyiv: Ukraine has kept its airspace closed to civilian traffic since the 2022 invasion, and no third-party travel route has been publicly announced. Kushner and Witkoff have made multiple previous visits to Russia for diplomatic outreach, but their upcoming Kyiv meeting marks a significant milestone in the latest push to end the protracted conflict.

For Linda Mancuso, a Long Island mother raising two children including 23-year-old nonverbal, disabled son Michael, Jean, a Haitian caregiver employed by a local nonprofit, was far more than just a support worker — he was a lifeline. For years, Jean handled every intimate, hands-on task Michael cannot complete on his own, from showering and eating to tying his shoes. When Mancuso made the agonizing decision to place Michael in residential care at 19, Jean’s compassionate connection with her son finally gave her the peace of mind she had longed for. That stability collapsed in late July, when Jean, along with 18 other Haitian coworkers at the nonprofit, was laid off after their Temporary Protected Status (TPS) expired.

TPS is a U.S. immigration program that grants eligible citizens from crisis-stricken, unsafe nations the right to live and work legally in the country. The termination of Haitian TPS was first announced by the Trump administration in June 2025, following Trump’s 2024 election victory, where strict immigration restriction was a central campaign promise. After a protracted legal battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, the nation’s highest court ruled in the administration’s favor, clearing the way for an estimated 350,000 Haitian TPS holders to lose their legal status by the end of July. Without active TPS, holders can no longer work legally and face immediate risk of deportation.

The impact of this policy change has hit the U.S. direct care and health care industry particularly hard, as Haitian immigrants make up one of the largest segments of the nation’s caregiving workforce. Kezia Scales, vice president of policy and research at the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, confirms Haiti ranks among the top five origin countries for immigrants in the U.S. direct care sector. Long before the TPS termination, the industry was already grappling with severe understaffing and years-long waitlists for critical services from home health care to assisted living. Scales emphasizes that when immigrant workers are excluded from the domestic labor market, there simply are not enough available U.S.-born workers to fill these critical, low-wage roles.

The staffing crisis is playing out at care organizations across the country. At AHRC Nassau, the New York nonprofit that employed Jean, CEO Stanfort Perry says the organization has already been forced to cut 19 Haitian workers this year alone, following 22 layoffs in 2025 amid broader immigration crackdowns. Perry explains that recruiting and training a single qualified care worker takes months, and the nonprofit cannot compete with higher wages offered by fast-food chains, grocery stores and retail outlets to attract replacement staff. In South Florida, Jewish Community Services, which serves a large population of senior clients including many Holocaust survivors, lost 18 Haitian TPS holders to layoffs. The organization has been forced to require remaining staff to work constant overtime, creating massive financial strain for the nonprofit. Sarah Katzenstein, the organization’s director of strategic communications, says the loss is particularly devastating for elderly clients, many of whom built decades-long trusting relationships with their Haitian caregivers — a bond especially critical for Holocaust survivors who struggle to connect with new people. These intimate care relationships cannot be easily replaced.

Advocacy groups and care organizations are pushing Congress to pass bipartisan legislation that would extend TPS for Haitian caregivers, but the bill has stalled in the Senate due to Republican opposition. The Trump administration has defended the policy: a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson rejected claims that the health care sector relies on TPS holders, calling the argument “grossly false and lazy” and reiterating that TPS is intended to be a temporary status. White House immigration czar Tom Homan defended ongoing deportations of Haitians in a recent CNN interview, saying the Supreme Court had ruled the removals were legal and that the administration was simply carrying out the will of the American voters who backed Trump’s immigration agenda.

Public opinion on the policy is divided. An AP-NORC poll conducted in recent weeks found that overall support for Trump’s immigration agenda has dropped 10 percentage points since the start of his second term, though it still remains stronger than support for his handling of issues like the economy. Around half of all U.S. adults surveyed say Trump has gone too far on deportations, a number unchanged since the start of 2026. A June 2025 Pew Research Center poll, conducted before the TPS termination took effect, found that 59% of Americans disapproved of ending Haitian TPS, while just 39% supported the move.

For families like the Mancusos, the policy change has created irreversible upheaval. Michael cannot articulate his loss, but Mancuso says he clearly misses Jean and does not understand why his trusted caregiver is gone. Her anxiety over her son’s care, already high, has spiked dramatically. She is not only fighting for her own son’s stability, but also for Jean and thousands of other Haitian TPS holders who now live in constant fear of deportation to gang-ravaged Haiti, even as they built careers and lives supporting vulnerable Americans. “I’m hoping against hope that this thing gets resolved,” Mancuso says. “I care about Jean as a human being — he needs a livelihood, he’s good at what he does, and he helped my son. And I want him back.”

Escalating tensions between the United States and Iran have erupted into open military confrontation in the Persian Gulf region, after U.S. Central Command (Centcom) launched targeted retaliatory strikes against three Iran-connected oil tankers Saturday. The operation came in direct response to ballistic missile launches by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) against two U.S. military vessels operating in the area.

According to Centcom’s official statement, the strikes inflicted severe, irreversible damage on the targeted vessels: one tanker was permanently disabled off the coast of Kharg Island, a second was rendered inoperable near the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz, and the third, the M/T Kylo crude oil carrier, was completely destroyed in the Gulf of Oman. Centcom confirmed that U.S. forces successfully evaded all incoming IRGC missile attacks aimed at a U.S. aircraft carrier and a guided-missile destroyer, and no American service members were injured in the exchanges.

Iranian state media had earlier reported a strike on one of its tankers off Kharg Island, but Tehran had not issued an immediate official response confirming the IRGC’s attacks on U.S. warships as of Saturday.

Admiral Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, issued a blunt public warning following the operation. “Let the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost – taking out three of yours,” Cooper said. “We will not hesitate to defend American forces, and if necessary, destroy Iran’s limited and exposed oil fleet.”

Centcom, which is responsible for overseeing all U.S. military activity across the Middle East, alleges that the three targeted tankers operate as part of a sprawling, multi-billion-dollar shadow oil network that generates revenue for the IRGC and its network of regional armed proxies, which the U.S. has long designated as terrorist organizations.

Saturday’s strikes mark a major escalation just one week after a new cycle of open hostilities broke out between the two nations, ending a period of relative calm that had held for months. The most recent round of conflict began on February 28, when the U.S. and Israel launched wide-ranging airstrikes against Iranian targets. Iran responded with its own strikes against Israeli territory, U.S. military bases in the region, and U.S.-allied Gulf states, and effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz – the world’s most important chokepoint for global oil exports – to commercial maritime traffic.

The ongoing dispute over control of the strait has already driven a sharp increase in global energy prices. With U.S. midterm elections scheduled for November, incumbent former President Donald Trump is facing growing political pressure from voters and lawmakers over the rising energy costs that the conflict is imposing on American consumers.

A surprise wave of public discussion erupted this week after the U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln pulled into a Thai port for a scheduled visit. Social media platforms were quickly flooded with images highlighting extensive visible rust across sections of the vessel’s hull and superstructure, turning a routine diplomatic port call into an unexpected talking point among defense observers and casual onlookers alike.

What makes the incident notable is the timing and context of the deployment: the Abraham Lincoln has been operating in the Indo-Pacific for months, conducting a series of joint exercises with regional allies and freedom of navigation patrols in contested waterways. Navy officials have noted that extended deployments at sea, far from regular maintenance facilities in continental U.S. bases, naturally lead to the buildup of superficial surface corrosion. Saltwater spray, constant humidity and prolonged exposure to the tropical sun all accelerate the oxidation process on exterior metal surfaces, even on the most advanced modern warships.

Critics, however, have pointed to the visible wear as a sign of broader systemic strains on the U.S. Navy, which has faced growing budget constraints, maintenance backlogs at domestic shipyards and increased operational tempo to counter growing security challenges in the Indo-Pacific region. For regional observers, the rusty appearance of one of America’s frontline capital ships has sparked quiet speculation about the sustainability of long-term U.S. military presence in Southeast Asia, even as the Navy reaffirms its commitment to regular rotational deployments and partnership with Thailand, a long-standing U.S. ally in the region.

The port call itself was intended to strengthen diplomatic and military ties between the two nations, allowing for crew rest and recreational activities in Thailand after months at sea. While the rust has drawn unplanned attention, defense analysts emphasize that superficial corrosion does not impact the carrier’s core operational capabilities, and the vessel remains fully mission-capable following its months of deployment in the region.