Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina


The Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina was a charity organization founded in 1993 by then Prince Salman of Saudi Arabia and supported by King Fahd. Reportedly, it had contributed $600 million in aid to Bosnian Muslims impoverished by the civil war in the former Yugoslavia before being forcibly closed in 2001.
Among the items found at the Sarajevo premises for the Saudi High Commission when it was raided by NATO forces in September 2001 were before-and-after photographs of the World Trade Center, US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole; maps of government buildings in Washington; materials for forging US State Department badges; files on the use of crop duster aircraft; and anti-Semitic and anti-American material geared toward children. Among six Algerians who would later be incarcerated at the Camp X-Ray detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba for plotting an attack on the US embassy in Sarajevo were two employees of the Commission, including a cell member who was in telephone contact with Osama bin Laden aid and al Qaeda operational commander Abu Zubaydah.
The Commission had been awarded King Faisal International Prize in 2001.