I think what I should have said in my reply to Lindy was questioning the flight "when all commercial flights were grounded".

The article you posted said the flight was one week after 9/11 - and I'm pretty sure commercial flights were up and running again on 9/14 or thereabouts?

The international flight leaving the United States from Boston left one week after 911, when flight restrictions had been lifted. The in-country chartered plane which rounded up members of the bin Laden family from several large American metropolitan areas, including DC, was flying around unmolested during the period in which all commercial and chartered flights were grounded. They were included among a number of other Saudi nationals who were allowed to leave the country precipitously. The justification for their departure was fear for their lives. Why these particular citizens were among the favored few in the profiled group who were not locked up by the Justice Department, one can only speculate.

Snopes has outlined the sequence of events surrounding the flights extensively.

The rest is somewhat disturbing. OTOH, without a Patriot Act in place (half-joking) could the family members have been legally refused flight?

As possible material witnesses or as possible accessories before &/or after the fact? You betcha. It's done all the time. Relatives are among the first people questioned. They are usually interviewed many times, over a period of days or weeks, and may be held in custody, protective or otherwise, if they are deemed to be in personal danger or to be flight risks. It's part of law enforcement's power to investigate crimes. It doesn't matter whether one is a citizen. It matters whether one is in the US.

It's very rare that officers overseeing an ongoing investigation will allow possible witnesses and possible suspects to take a powder to a nation with which we have no extradition treaty, particularly when the crime is less than a week old and far from resolved. Yet such was the case in 2001 with regards to Saudi Arabia. (I don't know if we now have a bilateral extradition treaty with the Saudis, but we didn't in 2001.) Any individuals with diplomatic visas are, of course, subject to special treatment, but nothing that I've read suggests that these individuals were diplomats.

The Fifth Amendment allows an individual to refuse, legally, to give self-incriminating evidence, but I have read here and elsewhere that there are two levels of humans when dealing with the Bill of Rights: Americans and Others. Presumably, therefore, any members of the bin Laden family, or any Saudis in general, who had something to hide could not avail themselves of the protections of the Fifth.

We didn't need the Patriot Act to detain the Saudis who left the country a week after 911. We needed to take responsibility for their safety while being held for questioning, and we needed a spine.

Regards--
Mary Anne