Word: bassnan
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Dates: during 2002-2002
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...have given money to associates of two 9/11 hijackers. The connection was tenuous but intriguing. Sources close to the case told TIME that beginning in January 1999 monthly payments of $2,000 were made from Princess Haifa's checking account to Majida Dwaikat, wife of Osama Bassnan. A Saudi national, Bassnan was living in San Diego last year and has been linked to Omar al Bayoumi, a Saudi student who befriended two men who wound up helping crash Flight 77 into the Pentagon. The sources also say that the ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, gave $15,000 to Bassnan...
...Charity, the Saudis say. In 1998 Bassnan wrote to the Saudi embassy in Washington pleading for assistance for his four kids and his ailing wife. A spokesman for Princess Haifa says "she had no knowledge that funds she gave away for charity may have been passed on to others." It's quite common for Saudi royals to give away large sums to countrymen who ask. What's more, agents haven't turned up evidence that Bassnan knew about the 9/11 plot, and the FBI has concluded that Bayoumi was not a witting accomplice...
...Still, Bassnan was charged with visa fraud and deported on Nov. 17, and the FBI hasn't closed the investigation into his and Bayoumi's finances. The princess has her accountant scrutinizing all the checks from the account in question; no doubt she and her husband will think twice the next time someone begs their generosity. --By John Cloud. Reported by Massimo Calabresi, Elaine Shannon and Adam Zagorin/Washington
...Some eight months later, Bassnan's wife Majida wrote to Princess Haifa to make a similar plea - and, in January of 1999, the first series of payments to Majida were sent to an address in Northern Virginia, in care of another party. Majida then apparently moved, and later checks went to an apartment in Baltimore...
...Sources told TIME that all payments stopped in May 2002. Majida was deported in November 2002; her husband Osama Bassnan has been charged with visa fraud...