Saudi authorities have released the wife of the alleged Al Qaeda chief in the kingdom, Saleh Mohammad al-Oufi, after a month in detention, an interior ministry official said in remarks published Wednesday.
| She was the one with the head in her fridge, right next to the macaroni salad, if I remember correctly... |
She was freed on Sunday after being questioned over her presence in a "suspicious place," the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat said, quoting ministry spokesman Mansur al-Turki. Oufi's wife was detained after she and her three children were held and moved to safety during a clash between Saudi security forces and militants in Riyadh on the night of July 20 in which two suspected militants were killed. The family were in a house raided by security forces. Reports that Oufi was killed in the shootout later turned to be unfounded. Oufi, a 38-year-old former police officer, was reported to have replaced Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin as Al Qaeda's chief in Saudi Arabia after Muqrin and three associates were gunned down by security forces in the Saudi capital on June 18. The four were killed after their "Al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula" posted grisly photos on websites showing the beheading of an American aeronautics engineer they had taken hostage. The beheading climaxed a string of attacks on Westerners in Saudi Arabia by suspected Al Qaeda gunmen, who unleashed a wave of bombings in Riyadh in May 2003. Some 90 people have been killed and hundreds hurt in the violence. Oufi figures on a list of 26 top terror suspects issued by authorities last December. Eleven on the list remain at large. The others have been killed or arrested by security forces, while a number surrendered to authorities. Only six militants, just one of whom figured on the most-wanted list, took up an amnesty offered by King Fahd in June to suspected Islamist extremists who turned themselves in within a month. |