JEDDAH, 25 June 2006 — Fourteen Saudi nationals in US custody at the Guantanamo Bay prison are on their way home, the Pentagon said yesterday.
Meanwhile, back in the Kingdom, the investigation following a raid on a suspected terrorist cell in Riyadh on Friday led to the arrest of two suspects in the nation’s capital yesterday, according to the Interior Ministry’s spokesman.
The repatriation of the 14 Saudis increases the number of repatriated Gitmo detainees to the Kingdom to 29 this year, not counting the two who returned dead after allegedly committing suicide earlier this month.
The Pentagon’s statement said that the latest repatriation leaves about 120 detainees of various nationalities that the United States has determined are eligible for “transfer or release” and about 450 prisoners in total.
Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki told Arab News that officials here were awaiting the arrival of the detainees. But he did not provide details about their fate here in the Kingdom.
Al-Turki did not give a timeframe for their release or disclose their identity.
“As soon as they set foot on land and we make sure of their identities, a statement will be issued,” he said.
Regarding the two suspects captured yesterday in an undisclosed location in Riyadh, Al-Turki said the arrests are linked to Friday’s shootout at a residential villa in Riydah’s Al-Nakhil district. The ministry spokesman did not provide the identity of the suspects, citing concerns over ongoing investigations against deviants.
Friday’s shootout left six suspects dead and one critically injured. A security officer was also killed and several others were injured in the shootout that began after midnight.
The ministry released the identity of the six suspects killed in the shootout.
The six were identified as: Mohammed ibn Rashed Al-Jalidan, Sami ibn Saud Al-Mutari, Mishal ibn Abdullah Al-Rashoud, Humod ibn Miqbel Al-Utaibi, Saad ibn Abdullah Al-Muathir and Ghazi ibn Salem Al-Utaibi. Al-Jalidan (alias Abu Dawood Al-Najdi) and Naif Al-Shaybani reportedly figured in a tape released by Al-Qaeda in March.
Al-Rashoud is believed to be the son of an alleged Al-Qaeda member, Abdullah Al-Rashoud, who figured on a list of Saudi Arabia’s most wanted deviants and was reported to have been killed in Iraq last year, the Arabic daily Al-Watan reported yesterday.
Local media reports said at least two of the men are believed to have escaped from a jail in Al-Kharj, approximately 80 kilometers to the southeast of Riyadh, in April.
The reports state that other men escaped in that jailbreak, which reportedly occurred when prisoners were being transferred.
Yesterday’s arrests have brought the number of suspected militants detained in the past month to 43, which has marked a sharp increase in reported anti-terrorism activities.
“The suspects share the same extremist ideology and the arrests were made under separate investigations,” said Al-Turki, but pointed out that authorities do not believe these suspects were working together as part of a terrorist cell.
The largest group of suspects arrested together in this recent batch of raids has been nine, all Saudis, said a ministry statement.
The ministry also said four wanted suspects, three Saudis and an Iraqi, were arrested in a raid at their tent hide-out in a desert area near the northeastern town of Hafr Al-Baten.
Weapons and documents were seized in the raid on the desert hide-out.
It said another 27 men were arrested across the vast desert of the Kingdom, in Makkah, the Eastern Province and the northern border region, including 24 Saudis, two Somalis and an Ethiopian. These arrests occurred in a series of raids at undisclosed locations between May 19 and 23.
The suspect that survived Friday’s shootout was reportedly recuperating from his wounds. Police seized weapons, ammunition, and large amounts of money, documents, forged papers, computers, hard disks, bogus license plates and counterfeit equipment from the house where the shootout took place on Friday.
