(AP) Relatives of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks called Thursday for the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate the FBI’s handling of evidence from its investigation into the hijackers and their associates, saying certain records are apparently missing or lost.
The victims’ relatives regard that missing or withheld evidence as potentially crucial in proving their premise that the Saudi kingdom was effectively complicit in the attacks. That thesis forms the basis of a pending federal lawsuit in New York, though U.S. investigations have not conclusively established such a link.
Among the pieces of evidence the families say the FBI has failed to produce are phone records of calls among co-conspirators in the attacks, records of witness interviews and a photograph of a Saudi diplomat with two of the hijackers outside a southern California mosque soon after they arrived in the U.S.
