JEDDAH, 9 September 2003 — The Ministry of the Interior yesterday urged Saudis to report any missing relatives in a bid to stop young people in the Kingdom from being recruited by Islamist militants.
“The government is keen to protect its citizens and sons from being misled by suspicious groups seeking to drive them to crime and to distance them from their Islamic and moral upbringing,” the ministry said in a statement.
“Citizens must immediately report any absence or loss of contact with children or relatives so the concerned authorities may help the family locate them before any harm occurs,” added the statement, carried by the Saudi Press Agency.
Meanwhile, the Western media is still reporting that wanted Al-Qaeda suspect Adnan El Shukrijumah is a Saudi national, despite evidence to the contrary.
“The Western media is reporting that he’s a Saudi national because he was born here in the Kingdom, but in fact he’s Guyanese,” Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi security analyst, told Arab News last night.
A global alert by the FBI for four suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists had identified one as Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, 28, born in Saudi Arabia.
But in March this year, the Ministry of the Interior clarified that Shukrijumah is not, and never has been, a Saudi citizen.
The FBI bulletin describes Shukrijumah as a possible Al-Qaeda operational planner similar to Mohamed Atta, a key organizer of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Shukrijumah’s background has also been explained by the Saudi Embassy in Washington.
“His father, Gulshai El Shukrijumah, worked in Saudi Arabia for 27 years as an expatriate employee until 1986, when the family moved to the United States. The father did not have Saudi citizenship. His son, Adnan El Shukrijumah, is also not a Saudi citizen, and if he is traveling using a Saudi passport then he has obtained it and is using it illegally,” the statement said.
There has also been confusion about another man, Saudi Zubayr Al-Rimi, 29, who is wanted by the FBI because of links to possible terror threats against the United States. According to a Saudi Interior Ministry official, Al-Rimi also appears on a Saudi list of 19 militants connected to the May suicide bombings in Riyadh, the Associated Press reported.
“There is a mistake in Zubayr Al-Rimi’s case. The FBI bulletin said Al-Qahtani was an alias for Al-Rimi, but it is in fact the other way around,” security analyst Obaid told Arab News.
Under the name Zubair Al-Qahtani, he appears on the list of 19 suspected militants wanted after police discovered a weapons cache in Riyadh in May, a week before the Riyadh bombings.
The 19 men are believed to be both behind the Riyadh bombings, which targeted residential compounds housing Westerners, and in close contact with Al-Qaeda.
Four of them were identified as among the nine bombers killed in the Riyadh suicide attacks. Six others were killed or captured in the crackdown on militant groups that followed the bombings.
Qahtani’s father, Jubran, said in Saudi papers published yesterday that he had not heard from his son since Sept. 1, 2001.
In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News, the father said he later discovered his son had gone to Afghanistan and not to Makkah, as he had told him.
Police in June arrested the fugitive’s Moroccan wife in a crackdown on militant groups, but the father said she was now at his house.
The father said he was awaiting official Saudi clearance to return her to Morocco.
The only clue given publicly by the FBI about Qahtani was the identity of his wife, a Moroccan named Hanan Raqib.
US officials said they had no evidence whether any of the four men named in the FBI alert are in the United States, but because they all have used false names and travel documents in the past, the possibility could not be ruled out. It was unclear whether they were working together.
Qahtani’s father told Asharq Al-Awsat he doubted that his son could be in the United States because he spoke no English. He also urged his son to surrender to the authorities.
