KUWAIT CITY, 7 January 2003 — Four Kuwaitis arrested last November for suspected links to Al-Qaeda denied yesterday that they belonged to the terror network or that they had ever been to Afghanistan, their lawyer said.

“There is no evidence of their connection to Al-Qaeda or the Taleban,” Osama Al-Munawer told reporters after the closed-door court hearing.

Munawer, who is defending three of the men, said the court would issue its verdict in the case on Feb. 3.

“In general, the defendants denied they went to Afghanistan and there is nothing in their passports that indicated they went to Afghanistan,” he said, adding that the four had traveled to Pakistan for charity work.

Mohsen Al-Fadli, 21, Maqbool Fahad Al-Maqbool and Mohammed Al-Mutairi, 25, and Adel Yusif Buhaimed, 35, were arrested on suspicion of being members of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda and helping finance terrorist attacks in the Gulf.

All four were accused last month of “joining a foreign nation’s military (and) endangering Kuwait’s political relations.”

None of the formal accusations had made any reference to Al-Qaeda, Afghanistan or terrorism.

Munawer said that during yesterday’s court session, a judge asked the defendants if they were members of Al-Qaeda and whether they knew any of the group’s leaders or members, which they all denied.

The four also denied ever being acquainted with one another prior to their arrest, he said.

“I say that indeed they don’t know one another or the state security would have submitted evidence that they did,” said Munawer.

“The defendants denied they trained in weapons or joined camps in Afghanistan or anywhere else.”

They denied sending money to Yemen for aid purposes or for setting up training camps, Munawer added, claiming there was no evidence such money was ever sent. The court previously charged Fadli and Maqbool with “training with weapons for an illegal purpose” while Buhaimed and Fadli “planned to finance the setting up of a training camp outside Kuwait, something that would have endangered Kuwait’s political ties.”

In addition, Mutairi was accused of “distributing a pamphlet that contradicted Kuwait’s national interests.”

Munawer told the opening court session that the Interior Ministry went on an arresting spree after Oct. 8, when two Kuwaiti assailants killed a US Marine and wounded another.

The attack “indicated how weak security was in the country,” the lawyer said.

Lawyer Fahad Al-Ajmi, who is representing Maqbool, told the court last month the four men “are scapegoats for America,” and that “everyone who has a beard ... has become a terrorist suspect”.

Kuwaiti newspapers have described Fadli as one of Al-Qaeda’s leaders for the Gulf and said his arrest foiled a plot by the terror group to blow up a hotel in Yemen frequented by Americans.

They have also reported that investigations have revealed that members of the same cell in Yemen were involved in an October 2000 attack on the destroyer USS Cole and an October 2002 attack on a French supertanker.

They said $127,000 had been raised for the planned hotel attack. (AFP)