JEDDAH, 1 December 2005 — About 90 percent of young Saudis who went to Afghanistan to join the jihad against the US-led Western forces there had no respect for the Kingdom’s well-known Islamic scholars, a former Al-Qaeda militant, Walid Khan, told Saudi Television.

“About 90 percent of Saudi fighters had no respect for the grand mufti nor the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars in the Kingdom. They had no respect for well-known Saudi scholars such as Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bin-Baz and Sheikh Abubakar Al-Jazairy,” Khan said.

He was speaking on a TV program, “Experiences in the Name of Jihad,” sponsored by the Interior Ministry as part of its media campaign to fight extremism and terrorism.

Khan said he had gone to northern Iraq, close to the Iranian border, in order to train and fight alongside Ansar Al-Sunnah, an Al-Qaeda-linked insurgency group.

In their confessions, Khan and two other former Al-Qaeda militants — Ziyad Ibrahim and Abdullah Khoja — spoke about their recruitment, training and military experience in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Dubai-based Al-Arabiya News Channel broadcast the program on Tuesday. As a follow-up, Saudi TV presented a live seminar with experts discussing the reasons why Saudi youths were attracted to extremist organizations and the effect of extremism on individuals, the family, society, security and the economy.

Since May 2003, Saudi Arabia has been fighting a long and bloody battle against Al-Qaeda which is blamed for a series of shootings and bombings in the country.

Ziyad Ibrahim recalled his experience in a training camp called Al-Sideeq in Afghanistan. “We trained with light arms for two to three weeks and there were daily drills about the Christian and Jewish conspiracy against Muslims,” he said.

Ibrahim said he was part of a group of about 30 led by two men known as Mamdouh Al-Beiruti and Abdul Rahman. “We had to take an oath to remain together and be loyal to the cause,” he explained.

Abdullah Khoja recalled, “The leader of the Uzbek mujahideen (holy warriors) in Afghanistan came to Taif. I met him and told him about my strong desire to go to Afghanistan, or any other place, and fight for God’s cause.”

Khoja said young Arab fighters in Afghanistan were afraid of being asked which country they were from. He quoted one fighter as saying, “Don’t ask your colleagues too many questions; they may think that you are an intelligence officer and will keep away from you.”

Khoja said while he was in Afghanistan, he had met fighters from Arab countries as well as from the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Daghestan. “There were also Pakistanis, Indonesians and Africans,” he added.

Most of the Arabs were Jordanians, followers of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, Khoja said, adding that they considered Zarqawi their spiritual leader.

Some of them had been sentenced to 15 years in jail but because of an amnesty, they had not served their full sentence. When they were released, they went to Afghanistan. They were the most dangerous group as they considered their government, army and police to be infidels, he said.

Khoja pointed out that there were minor differences between the ideas and policies of Zarqawi and Osama Bin Laden. He said a Yemeni fighter had told him that one day they would enter Riyadh in victory.

“I was really shocked by the statement as I had never heard it before,” Khoja said. His Eritrean camp leader later advised him to keep away from that particular group.