JEDDAH, 6 August 2004 — The Irish engineer who was shot dead in Riyadh on Tuesday is the eldest brother of Ireland’s famous poetess Rita Ann Higgins, who has published seven collections of poems since she started her writing career 22 years ago, Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News, reported yesterday.
Higgins, 49, is well known internationally for her rasping and yet insistently good-humored protests against social exclusion and the misuse of power in an increasingly materialistic Ireland. Her poems focus on the experience of harassed mothers, maladjusted sons, young drug addicts and victims of economic disenfranchisement.
Anthony Higgins, 63, from Mervue in Galway, was killed when two men entered his office at the Saudi-owned company, Rocky for Trade and Construction, in Riyadh’s Al-Rawda district and shot him in the head and chest.
Saudi authorities have meanwhile suggested that the execution-style killing with a pistol fitted with a silencer was the work of criminals, rather than the continuation of a terror campaign against Western expatriates.
The deputy head of mission at the Saudi Embassy in London, Ambassador Ferej Alowdi, told the Irish Independent: “We now believe this was possibly a criminal act rather than a terrorist act.
“Terrorist killings are carried out for the maximum publicity — this was done in a very quiet way. All the circumstances indicate this might be a criminal act.”
Suspect Arrested
Police arrested a wanted terror suspect at a house in Makkah on Wednesday and mounted a search for four other terrorists who have fled the scene in stolen cars.
Witnesses said security forces raided a house in Aziziya neighborhood before the arrest and seized two suspected vehicles, two bombs, two guns, including a Kalashnikov.
They said the four terrorists fled in a jeep toward Jeddah via Hada.
