Seized was a huge cache of computer-stored information on BIF executive director Enaam Arnaout's early ties to bin Laden. It allegedly included published photographs of the two men touring a camp in Afghanistan, a list of al-Qaeda financiers called the "Golden Chain," and bin Laden's plans to use Islamist charities for his jihad.

There were minutes of al-Qaeda's founding in Afghanistan in 1988 and copies of an al-Qaeda loyalty oath and criteria for membership, including, prosecutors said, a need to be "listening and obedient" and to have "good manners."

Chicago, 2002

He was charged with illegally diverting charitable funding to al-Qaeda operatives in the Balkans and elsewhere.

The government also shut down the organization, then the third-largest Islamist charity in the United States.

The Chicago-based BIF traced its origins to Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, when Saudi businessman Adel Batterjee founded it to raise money for Arab fighters battling to eject Soviets from Afghanistan, according to the Cozen suit.

The FBI had been investigating the charity for years. While the BIF had no apparent institutional links with the Saudi government, the Cozen lawsuit contends that the Sarajevo files and Arnaout's criminal investigation show that the BIF was part of a conspiracy that included Islamist charities openly tied to the Saudi government.

The lawsuit cites criminal evidence that bin Laden planned to use the BIF and other charities, including the Muslim World League, to fund his jihad beyond Afghanistan.

And it contends that BIF officials were al-Qaeda insiders who worked for other relief organizations with links to the Saudi government.

One day before his 2003 trial, Arnaout pleaded guilty to reduced charges that he fraudulently diverted charitable funds to rebel fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya for the purchase of boots, telecommunications equipment, blankets and other supplies.

Arnaout's lawyers and the trial judge said the government had failed to prove that Arnaout had used BIF money to support al-Qaeda.

He was sentenced to 11 years and three months in federal prison, later reduced to 10 years, for sending BIF money to Islamist fighters while telling donors it was used for humanitarian purposes.

Treasury still lists the BIF as a supporter of bin Laden. And designating the BIF as a terrorist supporter, which the charity challenged, was upheld by a federal judge.

Riyadh, May 12, 2003

Car bombs exploded in three Western housing compounds, while gunmen fired on buildings. Al-Qaeda, which for a decade or more had been hitting targets outside Saudi Arabia, had struck inside the country.

When the smoke cleared, 35 people were dead, including nine Americans, and the kingdom seemed far less secure.

Within months, the Saudis arrested or killed more than a dozen alleged al-Qaeda figures involved in the bombings. The government pledged to redouble strikes at homegrown operatives, a resolve U.S. officials lauded.

In the litigation over the 9/11 attacks, the Saudis cite those attacks in their defense: How could the government promote a movement that had vowed to destroy it?

In fact, Saudi officials insist they had been pushing hard against bin Laden for years.

When in the early 1990s it became clear that bin Laden was emerging as a threat, the Saudis revoked his passport.