RIYADH, 29 January — Nearly 100 of the 158 Al-Qaeda suspects detained at a US naval base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are Saudis, Interior Minister Prince Naif announced here yesterday. “The number of Saudis detained in Guantanamo is around 100,” the prince told reporters before leaving Riyadh for Beirut to attend a conference of Arab interior ministers.
Saudi Arabia “is aware (of their detention), but we don’t know the charges against them except that they were captured in Afghanistan,” Prince Naif said.
He said the Riyadh government was deeply concerned over the Saudi detainees. “We’ll demand that the Saudi detainees be handed over, because they are subject to the Kingdom’s rules,” he added.
In remarks published earlier yesterday, Prince Naif said Riyadh was in contact with Washington over Saudis imprisoned at the Guantanamo base. “Saudi Arabia is following up with US authorities the issue of Saudi prisoners at the Guantanamo base. We hope there will be cooperation between us and the Americans in this regard,” he told the Saudi daily Al-Watan.
If the United States hands them over to Saudi Arabia, “we will interrogate them to find the facts and then we will act accordingly.”
An unspecified number of Saudis who fought alongside Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organization and the Taleban in Afghanistan are believed to have been captured by the United States, Pakistan and the new Afghan government. Pakistan said two weeks ago that about 250 “Afghan Arabs,” including 240 Saudis, were arrested by joint US-Pakistani military teams on the border with Afghanistan.
Prince Naif denied US media reports that the FBI had helped Saudi Arabia to destroy an Al-Qaeda cell west of the Kingdom. He also dismissed as baseless media reports that American soldiers had been mistreated in the Kingdom.
He said that more time was required to give an exact figure of Saudis died in Afghanistan. He denied reports that the government had detained a number of Islamic scholars for inciting young Saudis to take part in jihad. “This is a baseless report. Can you mention one name,” he asked.
Prince Naif told Arab and Muslim thinkers and writers attending the Janadriah cultural festival in Riyadh on Sunday that Arabs and Muslims were badly hurt by the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.
He defended the Salafi school and Wahhabism saying “Wahhabism is only a reform movement aimed at clearing Islam of misconceptions.”
Prince Naif described Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people as “harsh and horrible terrorist attacks.”
Speaking on the Palestinian situation, Prince Naif asked: “Where is the humanity’s conscience, the United Nations, the Security Council and where is the free world which calls for protecting human rights?”
He said that the Arab and Islamic world was facing a “savage” Western media attack led by US media.
