(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released US Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) agency documents obtained under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) detailing the departure of 160 subjects of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, “including but not limited to members of the House of Saud and/or members of the Bin Laden family,” between September 11, 2001 and September 15, 2001. The documents are available on the Judicial Watch Internet site by clicking here (Adobe Acrobat Reader required).

The CBP document, dated February 24, 2004, lists the birth date, visa status, citizenship, date of departure, port of departure, departing airline code, and flight number for each Saudi subject who left the country at a time when the US government had supposedly restricted all commercial and private air traffic through US airspace. Notably, the names were not provided.

Judicial Watch filed its FOIA request on October 7, 2003, with the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, the State Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Justice Department and the Department of Transportation. To date, CBP is the only agency to have responded to the FOIA request in a substantive manner. CBP claims to have no responsive records concerning a reported departure of a large number of Saudis from Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky on September 13, 2001.

“Why is it the bin Laden family and other Saudi nationals were given special permission to flee US jurisdiction in the days following September 11, 2001? Evidently, the FBI never bothered to question this group. We hope this list does not turn out to be a terrorist ‘most wanted’ list,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.