KUWAIT CITY, 13 March 2003 — A Kuwaiti on trial for the premeditated murder of a US civilian contractor and the attempted murder of another pleaded not guilty in court yesterday.

Sami Mohammed Al-Mutairi, 25, told the court he did not kill Michael Rene Pouliot or try to kill David Caraway during a highway ambush in January near Camp Doha, the largest US military base in the emirate.

Mutairi, barely showing any expression, also denied possessing a Kalashnikov. He did, however, admit to the three other charges of possessing a small gun, forgery and of leaving the country at an unofficial border point.

Two other Kuwaiti suspects, Khalifa Hilal Al-Dihani and Badi Cruz Al-Ajmi, are also on trial in connection with the shooting, which was the second fatal attack on Americans in the emirate since last October.

The two are accused of possessing firearms, which they both denied. “I was arrested for something I know nothing about, I have 30 children,” Dihani told the court.

“This is true, I don’t know him,” Mutairi shouted out from his seat in the dock where he was held with the other two defendants.

Defense lawyer Fahad Al-Ajmi told the court he has evidence that would acquit his client, Ajmi, and said the weapon he was accused of having had been lying on his roof-top for years.

Osama Al-Munawer, one of two attorneys defending Mutairi, later told reporters “we don’t accept that young men are becoming terrorism suspects just because they have beards. Mutairi’s problem with state security is his beard and the fact that he tried to go to Afghanistan. That’s all,” the lawyer said.

Two more suspected accomplices — Abdullah Amer Al-Otaibi and Rajeh Hasan Al-Ajmi — are still at large.

Judge Mohammed Al-Khalaf adjourned the hearing until April 2.

Mutairi was arrested at the Kuwait-Saudi border by Saudi guards on Jan. 23, two days after the attack.

An Interior Ministry statement said he admitted the crime and “confessed he embraced the ideas of Al-Qaeda.”

The attack was the first to target civilians in Kuwait following a series of shootings involving US forces.

Last October, two Kuwaitis killed a US Marine and wounded another during war games on Failaka Island, 20 km east of the capital.

One of the two assailants — both also killed in the attack — had sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, the interior ministry said.

Last week, a court here jailed a Kuwaiti police officer for 15 years after convicting him of wounding two US soldiers last year.

Last month, four Kuwaitis were handed five-year jail terms after being convicted of training with Al-Qaeda and “joining the military forces of a foreign country which endangered Kuwait’s political ties.”

Kuwaiti officials have said most of the violence has been carried out by sympathizers of Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.

Some 8,000 Americans are resident in Kuwait while around 130,000 US troops are stationed in the northern Kuwaiti desert in preparation for a possible invasion of Iraq.