JEDDAH, 14 July 2004 — A disabled Saudi terror suspect has handed himself in to the authorities, the third to do so under a month-long partial amnesty announced in June, the Interior Ministry announced yesterday. The man is suspected of being a top Al-Qaeda figure close to Osama Bin Laden and had been hiding along the Iran-Afghan border.

“The wanted Saudi Khaled ibn Odeh ibn Mohammed Al-Harbi, alias Abu Suleiman Al-Makki, who had been in the Iranian-Afghan border region, contacted the (Saudi) embassy” in Iran, an Interior Ministry official said.

Saudi Television showed a wheelchair-bound Al-Harbi being carried off a plane on arrival in the Kingdom, accompanied by a woman and a teenager.

Al-Harbi said he was treated well and praised the amnesty. “Thank God... I called the embassy and we were very well received. I have come obeying God and obeying the (Kingdom’s) rulers. This generous initiative undoubtedly offers a chance to any rational person” to mend his ways, he said.

“Since he is paralyzed, he will be transferred directly to hospital to receive medical treatment,” the official said.

The announcement did not give more details, but Al-Harbi, a native of the holy city of Makkah, is known to have fought in Afghanistan alongside Al-Qaeda chief Bin Laden in the early 1980s, during the Soviet invasion.

Al-Harbi, who was wounded while fighting in Bosnia, taught courses in Islam at the Grand Mosque in Makkah but dropped out of sight after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

He is believed to have fled to Afghanistan at the time, and appeared alongside Bin Laden in a videotape aired by Qatar-based Al-Jazeera news channel in December 2001, during which he claimed that Muslim scholars “bless” the extremists’ actions.

Al-Harbi is only the third person to surrender since the amnesty announced on June 23 by King Fahd giving all militants still in hiding one month to surrender or face an all-out crackdown.

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Prince Naif said late Monday there would be no extension of the amnesty despite its poor results so far, but he expressed the hope that more suspects would come forward nearer the July 23 deadline. Authorities have repeatedly warned that terror suspects, blamed for a campaign of violence which has killed over 80 people and wounded hundreds since May 2003, will face being killed if they do not surrender within the set deadline.

Prince Naif said the government will not extend its amnesty to suspected terrorists when its deadline runs out in less than two weeks.

“If we go back to the speech of the king on the amnesty which was read out on his behalf by Crown Prince Abdullah, it set out one month, and there was no mention of any extension of the deadline. I am not aware of any new development,” Prince Naif was quoted by the Saudi Press Agency as saying after attending a meeting at the Shoura Council devoted to discussing violence and terrorism.

He said the government expected to see large numbers of terrorists give themselves up.

Prince Naif reiterated the government’s commitment to tackling terrorism and added it was focusing on stopping the cross-border smuggling of weapons.

Saudi security forces have arrested a man wanted on security-related charges in Buraidah, north of Riyadh. But he does not figure on a most-wanted list, reports said.

Police cordoned off early Monday the old quarter of Al-Malek where the wanted man had rented a house since his arrival in the city. The man surrendered without offering any resistance during a raid in which police used helicopters. Some electronic equipment, including a computer and CDs, was confiscated.