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Saudi Official Pins Yanbu Attack on Committee for the Defence of Legitimate Rights
Saudi Arabia says four men who killed five Westerners in a suspected al Qaeda attack on a Saudi energy site were two brothers and their uncles, and one had links to a Saudi dissident group in London. Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz has said he believes Osama bin Ladenâs al Qaeda was behind Saturdayâs attack in the oil and petrochemical hub of Yanbu. ..... The Interior Ministry named the attackers as brothers Sami and Samir al-Ansari and their uncles Ayman and Mustafa, all Saudis. It identified Mustafa as a suspected militant wanted by Saudi authorities who had entered the country illegally after working with well-known Saudi dissident figures abroad. "He last left the country in 1994 to join Saad al-Fagih and Mohamed al-Masâari to work with them in their suspicious committee," it said. "He recently entered the country illegally, crossing the borders in order to carry out vile plans." .... Fagih and Masâari, two British-based Saudi opposition figures promoting democratic reform in the conservative kingdom, set up the Committee for the Defence of Legitimate Rights (CDLR) in 1993. "This is a desperate and hopeless attempt by the Saudi government to find some link (between us and terrorists), after trying many times and failing," Fagih told Reuters by telephone. "The Saudi government has to decide if it is accusing us, Israel or al Qaeda, and then those accusations can be taken seriously," he said in reference to initial comments by Crown Prince Abdullah blaming "Zionist hands" for the attack. He said someone called Mustafa al-Ansari had frequented the CDLR in 1996, but he did not know if it was the attacker. ... Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-05-04 |
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