JEDDAH, 11 June 2004 — The United States is investigating allegations Libya’s intelligence service plotted to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah last year, the New York Times reported yesterday.
In a front-page report, the paper said two individuals involved in the conspiracy and now in custody in the United States and the Kingdom provided statements outlining the plot.
The participants, Abdurahman Alamoudi, an American Muslim leader now in jail in the US, and Col. Mohamed Ismael, a Libyan intelligence officer in Saudi custody, have given separate statements to American and Saudi officials outlining the plot.
Alamoudi has told FBI officials and federal prosecutors that Col. Qaddafi approved the assassination plan.
American officials confirm that Alamoudi and Ismael offered detailed accounts of a Libyan plot to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah and that they appear credible enough to have launched an American investigation.
But the officials said they are still examining the scope of the plot, how far it advanced and whether Col. Qaddafi was involved. They said the accusations were one reason the US had not removed Libya from the State Department’s list of nations that support terrorism.
As a revolutionary who overthrew a monarchy, Col. Qaddafi has long regarded the Saudi royal family with a degree of contempt. The feeling was often mutual as he charted an erratic course in the Middle East. In recent years, however, Saudi and British diplomats worked behind the scenes to help Libya negotiate an end to sanctions.
Alamoudi’s statements were offered in plea negotiations with federal prosecutors. He was indicted last October, accused of receiving money from Libyan officials.
Under federal guidelines, prosecutors could urge a judge to reduce his prison term in exchange for his statements.
The statements of the two conspirators were described by three people with extensive official knowledge of the case who insisted that they not be identified because it remains classified. Senior officials in the American, British and Saudi governments have been aware of the investigation for several months.
A Libyan terrorist plot, if verified, would undermine Qaddafi’s public pledges that he has abandoned terrorism. It could also trigger a reinstatement of international sanctions on Libya that were lifted last September.
President Bush has conveyed to the Saudi royal family that he is going to find out what happened, according to a diplomat.
Alamoudi has told prosecutors that he twice met with Qaddafi, in June and August of 2003, to discuss the assassination plan, according to people with official access to his statements. In June, Alamoudi said, Qaddafi told him, “I want the Crown Prince killed either through assassination or through a coup.” By August, Qaddafi asked why he had not yet seen “heads flying” in the Saudi royal family.
Alamoudi has been questioned in great detail about his two meetings with Qaddafi, including details of alleged meetings in June and August.
FBI investigators are trying to arrange meetings with two of Alamoudi’s associates to whom he confided details of the plot, according to the paper.
The first person to provide Saudi, British and American authorities with an account of a plot was Col. Ismael, 36, who was captured by Egyptian police after he fled Saudi Arabia last November in an aborted “drop” of $1 million to a team of four Saudi militants who were prepared to attack Prince Abdullah’s motorcade with shoulder-fired missiles or grenade launchers, according to his statements.
Ismael has said that his orders came from Libyan intelligence chiefs Abdullah Senoussi and Musa Kussa, both of whom report directly to Qaddafi, according to sources.
FBI and CIA officers have twice traveled to Saudi Arabia to interview Ismael. Investigators are said to believe that his account matches Alamoudi’s and that, taken together, the accounts could form the basis of a criminal indictment against Qaddafi.
Kussa played a leading role last fall with American and British intelligence teams to work out a surrender of Libya’s illicit weapons programs. The Saudis were arrested Nov. 27 as they prepared to receive $1 million in cash from Ismael and a team of Libyan intelligence officers in Makkah.
In the reported conspiracy, Alamoudi and Ismael traveled to London seeking to make contacts among Saudi dissidents through whom they could recruit militants in the Kingdom willing to participate in the plot. They distributed more than $2 million in cash in this recruitment drive in London, they claim.
Alamoudi, an American citizen, has been a longtime spokesman for Muslim views in America as founder of the American Muslim Council.
The State Department paid him to travel overseas and advocate tolerance and reconciliation among Jews, Christians and Muslims, but he was later accused of making statements in support of terrorism.
A person close to Alamoudi said he believed Alamoudi entered into the reported conspiracy because he badly needed money and did not believe that Qaddafi would carry out the plan.
Crown Prince Abdullah is said by two officials to be convinced that Qaddafi was out to kill him and decapitate the Saudi government. But the prince is also concerned about playing into the hands of American hard-liners who might use the case to call for leadership change in Libya, a step that Saudi Arabia would oppose, officials said.
“We are going to really jam Qaddafi over this, but there is no pretext for regime change,” the Saudi official said. “What is in our interest is to keep the caged animal in his cage.”
