Holly Ratchford, who managed a residential complicated in California’s San Diego the place two of the 9/11 hijackers lived, has spoken publicly for the primary time about her encounters with Saudi nationwide Omar al-Bayoumi, who’s accused of serving to the 2 males earlier than the assaults.Talking to the BBC, Ratchford mentioned she nonetheless struggles to reconcile the pleasant man she knew with the allegations surrounding him. “It is nearly unimaginable for me to wrap my head round who he mentioned he was, and who he actually is. I nonetheless wrestle with that,” she mentioned.Bayoumi moved along with his household into Parkwood Flats in September 1999 and shortly grew to become a daily at Ratchford’s pool events. She described him as “all the time so bubbly and smiling” and “very, very pleasant”.In February 2000, Bayoumi introduced two males, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, to Ratchford’s workplace looking for an condominium. The pair didn’t meet the complicated’s revenue necessities, however Bayoumi co-signed their lease and helped them open a checking account.Hazmi and Mihdhar later grew to become two of the 19 al-Qaeda members who hijacked 4 US passenger planes on September 11, 2001.The 2 have been on American Airways Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.Ratchford mentioned she had no purpose on the time to suspect the boys. “There was completely nothing uncommon about them. They have been good, they have been well mannered,” she advised the BBC.She later discovered of their identities within the aftermath of the assaults, when a girl who claimed to be looking for a rental reference requested her whether or not she knew they have been terrorists who had flown a aircraft into the Pentagon.“And I went, ‘What?’” Ratchford recalled.The FBI interviewed her on September 14, 2001, and obtained Bayoumi’s guarantor type. Former FBI investigator Richard Lambert advised the BBC that investigators later recognized “a community headed up by Omar al-Bayoumi”.Bayoumi has lengthy confronted allegations that he facilitated the hijackers’ actions in San Diego.In an August 2025 ruling, a New York federal decide discovered that proof created a “cheap inference” that Bayoumi and a Saudi diplomat had been coordinating with the Saudi authorities whereas aiding the hijackers. Saudi Arabia and Bayoumi have denied the allegations and Saudi Arabia is interesting the ruling.Ratchford, who has supplied a sealed declaration to the New York courtroom, mentioned she has been haunted by her connection to the three males for the previous 25 years.
