RIYADH, 24 June — Saudi Arabia holds most of the suspects in the 1996 Alkhobar bombing that killed 19 US airmen and will put them on trial soon, Interior Minister Prince Naif announced yesterday. “Only three suspects, two of them Saudis and the other a Lebanese, have not been arrested. The other accused are being held in the Kingdom,” he said in an interview with Al-Riyadh Arabic newspaper.
US Attorney General John Ashcroft announced on Thursday that a grand jury had indicted 13 Saudis and a Lebanese for the blast in the eastern Saudi city of Alkhobar. “The US justice secretary’s indictment does not concern us and will have no effect on the course of the investigation which will take its own time like all other cases,” said the Saudi interior minister.
He said the suspects would appear before the Saudi judiciary “in the not too distant future”. The US “has not kept us informed nor coordinated with us (on the indictment), and I don’t know for what reason,” Prince Naif said. He denied the existence of a Saudi branch of Hezbollah. “There is no so-called Saudi Hezbollah in the Kingdom and we reject any such assertion. But there could be individuals who are linked to the Lebanese Hezbollah,” he explained.
On Friday, Prince Sultan, second deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, said Washington had no right to issue indictments against suspects behind the June 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers military housing complex. The “American government has the right to discuss the Khobar explosion, but it does not have the right to take any (legal) step whatsoever in this matter. Such steps fall within the jurisdiction of Saudi Arabia,” he said.
The US Justice Department identified the suspects as Ahmad Al-Maghsal (Abu Omran), Ali Al-Howry, Hani Al-Sayegh, Ibrahim Al-Yaakub, Abdul Kareem Al-Nasir, Mustafa Al-Qassab, Saad Al-Bahr, Abdullah Al-Jerrash, Hussein Al-Meqhas, Ali Al-Marhoun, Saleh Ramadan, Mustafa Al-Muallem and Fadhel Al-Alawi (all Saudis). The name of the Lebanese was unknown.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, has rejected as baseless US accusations linking Iranian officials to the bombing. “The US judiciary has leveled charges against Iran which have no legal and judicial basis,” it said on Friday.
Ashcroft charged that elements of the Iranian government “inspired” and “supervised” the Alkhobar bombing, although no individual members of Iran’s leadership were named in the indictments.
Turning to Iran, Prince Naif said Saudi Arabia had “nothing” to confirm Tehran’s involvement in the attack. “The Iranian government has assured us it was not involved in this affair,” he told Al-Riyadh newspaper.
Asked what Saudi Arabia would do if the US asked for the extradition of the suspects, Prince Naif said: “I think the country in which the crime took place is the only one that has the right (to try the accused).” He said no other party has any right to try or investigate cases that happened in the Kingdom.
“We do not belittle the American government’s concern given that the victims were Americans and we really appreciate their cooperation with us to apprehend the suspects. We are the ones concerned with the case and it will run its course just as other cases run their course under Saudi security apparatus and under the Saudi legal system,” he added.
The US federal grand jury’s 46-count indictment included conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and bombing resulting in death and murder of federal employees. The charges, the first after an intensive five-year-long investigation, were brought days before the fifth anniversary of the attack.
Meanwhile, US embassies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar said yesterday that they were warning Americans to be on guard after US forces in the Gulf were put on the highest alert against an “increased risk of terrorist action”. A spokesman for the US Embassy in Riyadh said a message urging vigilance would be posted on the embassy website and pre-recorded phone lines.
“Americans should maintain a low profile, vary routes and times for all required travel, and treat mail and packages from unfamiliar sources with suspicion,” the message said. “Vehicles should not be left unattended, if at all possible, and should be kept locked at all times. In addition, US government facilities have and will continue to temporarily close or suspend public services as necessary to review their security posture and ensure its adequacy.”
An official at the US Embassy in Bahrain said the embassy was closed to the public yesterday. A security man on the door said it might remain shut until tomorrow. The US spokesman in Riyadh stressed the warning was worldwide and not related specifically to any threat in Saudi Arabia.
On Friday, US officials said forces in the Gulf had been put on Threat Condition Delta on Thursday based on a non-specific but credible threats. US warships in Bahrain, headquarters of the US 5th Fleet, had been ordered to sea and a US Marine Corps training exercise in Jordan was being cut short.
NBC television reported on Friday there had been at least three threats of attacks on US forces in the Gulf on June 25, the fifth anniversary of the Alkhobar bombing.
