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Al Qaeda behind Libyan plot to murder Saudi prince

RIYADH: A leading Saudi-owned newspaper reported Saturday that four Libyan-recruited would-be assassins of Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz were members of Al Qaeda, the network blamed for the terror that has hit Saudi Arabia in the past 13 months.

Saudi officials have not commented on the alleged plot to murder Abdullah or spoken of retaliatory measures, but Asharq Al-Awsat’s claim came as other Saudi newspapers assailed Libyan leader Moamer Gaddafi for the second day in a row.

The daily Okaz also sought to link Libya to the wave of bombings and shootings which began in Saudi Arabia in May 2003, quoting unspecified sources as “not ruling out the involvement of Libyan intelligence in some of the recent bombings and killings.”

The New York Times reported on Thursday that two people involved in a plot to fire rockets at Abdullah’s motorcade had been detained in the United States and Saudi Arabia and that the plot was being investigated by Washington, Riyadh and London.

The two were named as Abdurahman Almoudi, an American arrested in October for violating a US ban on travel to Libya, and Colonel Mohammed Ismael, a Libyan intelligence officer captured by Egyptian police in November after he fled Saudi Arabia where he tried to pay four Saudi militants. Libya has denied the allegations.

Reporting from Jeddah, Asharq Al-Awsat said Ismael fled from the Rea Sea port city to Cairo last November after he saw Saudi security forces besieging a hotel in nearby Mecca in which the four Saudis affiliated to Al Qaeda, and who were supposed to carry out the assassination, were staying.

The four were to use shoulder-held or armor-piercing missiles in the assassination, it said, adding that the hotel was located opposite the palace where Abdullah was due to stay.

The plot was uncovered thanks to the measures Saudi Arabia has introduced to monitor the flow of money into the country, the paper quoted reliable sources as saying in a reference to the tighter controls meant to prevent terror financing which began after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

An employee in a branch of Al-Rajhi Bank in Mecca became suspicious of a one-million-dollar transfer to Ismael, who said it was meant to cover the expenses of Gaddafi ‘s wife during a pilgrimage trip to the Muslim holy city.

Saudi authorities put Ismael under surveillance and eventually raided a hotel apartment where the four Saudi Al Qaeda recruits were staying and arrested them, prompting the Libyan intelligence officer to flee to Egypt.

Security authorities immediately contacted their Egyptian counterparts, who arrested Ismael as soon as he landed in Cairo and put him on a plane back to Saudi Arabia, the paper said.

The daily Al-Watan gave a slightly different account of the run-up to Ismael’s flight to Egypt but named a second Libyan security agent — Abdul Fattah al-Ghosh — who accompanied him and was sent back to Saudi Arabia. afp

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