JEDDAH, 8 January — The Kingdom is unaware of any Saudi citizens held in Pakistani jails following the ouster of the Taleban militia from power in Afghanistan, Riyadh’s ambassador to Islamabad said in remarks published yesterday.
Ali Saeed Awad Al-Asiri told Al-Watan newspaper only one Saudi national was jailed in Pakistan and that was for a drug offense.
The envoy told the daily he was "unaware of any other Saudis detained in Pakistani jails."
Al-Asiri, however, said that other Saudis might be detained in camps set up by Pakistani and American authorities on the borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but the Saudi government was unaware of them.
Pakistani Interior Minister Gen. Mueen Haider said on Sunday around 240 Saudi nationals who fled Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taleban militia by US-aided forces, were held in Pakistan.
He added that Islamabad would hand over any Afghan Arab, regardless of nationality, to the United States if they were found to belong to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.
"We have (arrested) a number of Afghan Arabs after crossing into Pakistan from Afghanistan. There are 240 Saudis as well as Yemenis and other Arab nationals. They are being interrogated" in Pakistani jails, Haider said.
"Arab Afghans" are Arabs who originally went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to help fight the Soviet invasion of that country.
Haider said Islamabad had received a list of Al-Qaeda members from the United States and was comparing the names of the prisoners with the names on the list.
"We are conducting a joint investigation with American intelligence. If we find there are Saudi members of Al-Qaeda, we will hand them over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation," he said. "But if we find that some of the prisoners have no links to terrorism and are not on the (US) list ... we will adopt a different approach with them. We will coordinate with the Saudi government," he said.
In a report late last month, the Pakistan Online newspaper said 30 Saudi nationals were among 95 suspected members of Al-Qaeda network arrested in Pakistan while fleeing Afghanistan.
However, Ambassador Asiri then refused to confirm the report saying that the embassy had not been notified by Pakistani authorities of the arrests.
The ambassador said many non-Saudis in the past had used forged documents to pose as Saudi nationals.
Al-Asiri said that some 140 Arab families, some of them Saudis, are currently living with the Pashtun tribes near the Pakistani borders, and the Saudi Embassy will help repatriate them.
