Holly Ratchford was in her late 20s, managing a 187-unit apartment complex in San Diego's Clairemont neighborhood, when a smiling Saudi man who called himself a student started showing up to her pool parties in September 1999. He seemed friendly, sociable, and entirely unremarkable. Weeks later, he introduced her to two young men he vouched for as fellow students from his mosque, and Ratchford rented them a unit. Those two men, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, would go on to help hijack American Airlines Flight 77 and crash it into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
Ratchford spoke publicly for the first time about that chapter of her life in an August interview with the BBC, describing how Omar al-Bayoumi appeared bubbly and smiling around the Parkwood Apartments pool before introducing her to al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. She said she only learned who her former tenants really were days after the attacks, when someone called requesting a rental reference. As reported by the New York Post, Ratchford said there was nothing unusual about the two men and described them as very friendly and polite. She admitted, “I bought into everything” al-Bayoumi told her.
The Parkwood Apartments complex sat at 6333 to 6401 Mount Ada Road, where al-Bayoumi lived in unit 152 before he co-signed the lease for al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar in unit 150 in February 2000, according to records held by the FBI Vault. The complex has since been converted into condominiums known as Blossom Walk. Al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar initially tried to rent a one-bedroom unit from Ratchford and paid in cash, per the Post's reporting.
A Saudi Contact With Mosque Ties and a Sketchbook
Al-Bayoumi told investigators he met the two men by chance at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Los Angeles, and separately said he knew them from his mosque, according to a 2021 FBI report cited by the Post. Investigators later found he had a sketchbook containing a plane drawing and an equation, and he helped al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar set up a bank account after vouching for them to Ratchford. A source quoted in that same 2021 FBI report described al-Bayoumi as having very high status inside the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, and the FBI has said he was paid by a contractor for the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority. Al-Bayoumi was released without being charged with a crime and moved to Saudi Arabia in 2002.
The bipartisan 9/11 Commission concluded in 2004 that al-Bayoumi's meeting with the hijackers was a random encounter, but subsequent FBI declassifications and retired investigators have since described him differently, characterizing him as a Saudi intelligence operative who led a local support network, per ProPublica. Retired FBI supervisor Richard Lambert, who led the bureau's San Diego office investigation after the attacks and now consults for the plaintiffs' legal team, has said the San Diego Muslim community generally believed al-Bayoumi was a Saudi intelligence operative.
Flight Lessons and a Mosque Community in San Diego
While living at Parkwood Apartments in May 2000, al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar took introductory flight lessons at the Sorbi Flying Club at Montgomery Field, but quit quickly after demanding to fly Boeing passenger aircraft right away, according to the Los Angeles Times. Flight instructors at the time reported that the pair spoke poor English and lacked basic piloting aptitude. Around the same period, the two men regularly attended prayers at the Islamic Center of San Diego, where they met local community members who helped them find housing in Lemon Grove after they moved out of Parkwood in May 2000, leaving no forwarding address with Ratchford.
A 1999 video recorded by al-Bayoumi in Washington, D.C., unsealed in federal court filings in June 2024, shows detailed footage of Capitol entrances, security checkpoints, and nearby landmarks while he verbally references a plan, according to CBS News. The footage was originally seized by British law enforcement in September 2001 and later turned over to U.S. investigators. That evidence, along with the video showing al-Bayoumi filming the U.S. Capitol, became part of the material the 9/11 families cite in their case.
A $1 Trillion Case Heading to Appeals Court
Much of this evidence surfaced only because Executive Order 14040, signed by President Biden in September 2021, mandated a declassification review of government 9/11 files, leading to the release of previously classified FBI records on Saudi support networks in Southern California. In August 2025, U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels ruled in Manhattan federal court that the civil 9/11 lawsuit against Saudi Arabia could proceed to trial, citing an inference that the Saudi government had employed al-Bayoumi and circumstantial evidence that Saudi Arabia assisted the hijackers, according to The Guardian.
The multidistrict litigation, brought by thousands of 9/11 victims, surviving family members, and first responders under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, seeks approximately $1 trillion in total damages from Saudi Arabia. The 9/11 attacks killed 2,977 victims, with the Flight 77 attack on the Pentagon alone killing 184 people. Saudi Arabia has denied involvement in preparations for the attacks and is fighting the families' claims in court, having appealed Judge Daniels's ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where oral arguments are scheduled for October 2026.
Attorneys for the 9/11 families are seeking compensation in court, arguing the Saudi government should be held liable for the attacks. As the 25th anniversary of September 11 approaches next month, Ratchford's account, first told publicly this month, has become a small but human thread connecting a suburban San Diego apartment complex to a legal battle over foreign government accountability that is still far from resolved.
