RIYADH, 1 July 2003 — The mother of Ali Abdul Rahman Al-Faqaasi Al-Ghamdi, the suspected mastermind behind the terrorist attacks that shook the capital on May 12, said yesterday she was relieved her son gave himself up to Saudi authorities.
“He took the step of his own free will without any pressure from anyone. He wanted to tell the authorities at the Interior Ministry the whole truth.
“He preferred to give himself up rather than be a fugitive,” she said.
The mother told Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News, that she was confident her son was innocent and that he had not done anything wrong, let alone have a hand in what happened in Riyadh.
She said the family had been shocked to see his name included on a list of 19 suspected terrorists published a week prior to the May 12 explosions.
“He settled down in Madinah after returning from Afghanistan,” she said. “Because he was afraid the Americans would capture him and imprison him in Guantanamo, as they did with other Saudis, he fled Afghanistan through the mountains and arrived in the Kingdom.”
She said her son was married to a Moroccan woman he had met in Syria earlier.
She added that Ali contacted her from Riyadh, where he studied at Imam Muhammad ibn Saud University, to ask his parents’ permission to fight and “seek martyrdom” in Chechnya. But the parents refused permission, she said.
However, the family later learned that Ali had left to fight in Afghanistan without his parents’ permission. The mother said she did not notice any change in his demeanor at the time. “He has been a calm person since childhood. He maintained a good relationship with his brothers and with everyone else,” she said.
She said she last saw her son during Eid Al-Fitr in Jeddah. “He informed us of his intentions to live in Madinah and since then we haven’t seen him.”
The mother praised the treatment her son received from Prince Muhammad ibn Naif, deputy minister of the interior, after being assured by her husband that their son was doing fine and was in good health and spirits.
She said both parents were relieved that he decided to give himself up, and said she was no longer afraid since he was now in the custody of Saudi authorities.
Ali’s mother said that his wife, who is refusing to speak to the press, was suffering from psychological problems after learning that her husband was wanted by the authorities for his involvement in terrorist acts.
Ali’s wife was being treated in a local hospital, the mother said.
The head of the Khutheim tribe, Abdul Rahman ibn Hashim, to which Ali belongs, told Asharq Al-Awsat the suspect had disappeared from Raghdan village in Al-Baha province, in the south of the Kingdom. He said Ali did not regularly contact the tribe. The suspect’s father had told him that Ali would not tell anyone his exact whereabouts. All he would say he was in “God’s land” every time the topic was brought up.
The tribal chief denied that the suspect’s family knew of Ali’s whereabouts before he gave himself up. “We asked his family to tell their son to give himself up to the authorities if they heard anything from him, as the authorities would be more merciful to him than even he himself,” he said.
The sheikh said there was nothing unusual in so many men with the surname Al-Ghamdi being named in the terrorist list, as in every family there were good and bad people. “The Al-Ghamdi tribe consists of 600,000 people, and the fact that some names from this big tribe were listed in the terrorist list does not mean that the entire tribe is bad,” he added.
