‘Terror charges against Saudi prisoners in Iraq are false’

JEDDAH: The Saudi Ambassador to Jordan has rejected terror charges against Saudis incarcerated in Iraqi jails and slammed the government of that country for concealing information on the inmates.
"The file of Saudi prisoners in Iraq has grabbed the attention of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman, the crown prince and deputy crown prince," Sami Al-Saleh was quoted as saying by a local publication on Tuesday.
“We sincerely hope that the Saudi prisoners will be included in the next amnesty,” he said, adding that the amnesty law is still being discussed.
There is no accurate statistics showing the numbers of Saudi prisoners in Iraq because the authorities there hide information in this regard, he said. Rejected the allegations of the Iraqi authorities that most of the Saudi prisoners are terrorists, Al-Saleh said: “Not every person who illegally enters a foreign country is classified as terrorist.”
The envoy said he spoke to some Iraqi officials, demanding the retrial of the Saudi prisoners because they were in no way involved in terrorism. “They entered the Iraqi soil by mistake,” he asserted, pointing to a law in that country that regards any infiltrator as a terrorist.
On the numbers of the Saudi prisoners in the Iraqi prisons, he said: “The officially announced number stands at 68 prisoners, but we think the figure is higher, the double may be. We strongly seek to know the situation and number of all Saudi prisoners in Iraq during the few coming days.”