WASHINGTON, 12 August — Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal has said that Iran detained and later handed over to the Kingdom 16 Al- Qaeda fighters who sought refuge in Iran after fleeing Afghanistan.
Prince Saud told The Washington Post in an interview published yesterday that a group of Saudi officials traveled to Iran in May to question the 16 Saudi nationals.
“We asked the Iranians to hand them over and they did,” the Post quoted the prince as saying. He said the Al-Qaeda members were transferred from Iran to Saudi Arabia in June.
Asked on ABC television what would happen to the suspects once the Saudi authorities had finished their interrogation, Prince Saud said: “The innocent will be allowed to go and the guilty incarcerated and brought to trial.”
The prince also spoke of “very important and very significant cooperation” by Iran in fighting terrorism. “Iran has not only cooperated with Saudi Arabia in this conflict in Afghanistan but cooperated extensively with the United States,” he said.
The foreign minister also dismissed a Rand Corp. report that accused Saudi Arabia of supporting US enemies and attacking its allies. “I don’t assume that what it (the report) said will be taken seriously,” he said, adding that the United States should be “looking for allies to fight terrorism, not creating enemies out of allies.”
Prince Saud said that as things currently stand, his country would not allow its territory to be used for US strikes aiming to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. “Well, under the present circumstances...with no proof that that there is an imminent threat from Iraq, I don’t think Saudi Arabia will join...in the war,” he said. “We see that there is movement on the diplomatic front on this issue and we think it is just, only right to give this diplomatic solution a chance before going to war.”
