Al-Qaeda link to Saudi national guard

May 20 2003
By Peter Finn
Riyadh

Saudi authorities are investigating suspected illegal arms sales 
by members of the country's national guard to al-Qaeda operatives 
in the country.  

The weapons were seized in a May 6 raid on an al-Qaeda safe house 
and were traced to national guard stockpiles, US and Saudi sources 
said.  

The Saudi Government has also admitted that three of the suicide 
bombers involved in attacks in Riyadh last week, which killed 34 
people, were part of a group of 19 people wanted in connection with 
the May 6 raid.  

Problems in the Saudi Arabian National Guard are not new, the officials 
say, and past audits of its armouries have revealed that weapons were 
missing. But there was no crackdown on the illicit trade largely because 
of bureaucratic inertia.  

"This will focus their attention," a US official said.  

A small number of officers in the national guard had been involved in 
illicit gun sales for years, the officials said, and had sold weapons, 
including automatic rifles, to anyone willing to pay prices well above 
market value. The officials emphasised that the motivation of the officers 
selling the weapons had been money, not ideology, and did not indicate 
any al-Qaeda penetration of a force that was supposed to protect the 
Government.  

A Saudi official said the discovery had galvanised the senior Saudi 
leadership and the national guard itself. One of its officers was shot 
and killed last week as he tried to fend off suicide bombers who stormed 
one of the targeted residential compounds in Riyadh.  

"People are furious," one Saudi official said.  

But a spokesman for the Saudi Foreign Ministry later denied that any 
national guard weapons had been found at the al-Qaeda safe house. He 
said only Russian-made weapons had been found in the raid, and that 
the national guard had none in its arsenal.  

Interior Minister Prince Nayef said on Sunday that authorities had 
arrested four people linked to al-Qaeda. He said the arrested suspects 
were "linked to the operation . . . but it has not been proven that they 
took part in it".  

As the investigation continues, Saudi authorities have begun to break 
down the composition of an al-Qaeda group of at least 50 to 60 people 
in the country, according to sources. The group is led by Khaled Jehani, 
29, who left Saudi Arabia when he was 18, later fought in Bosnia and 
Chechnya, and had been based at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. He 
returned to Saudi Arabia through neighbouring Yemen after the 
September 11 attacks, according to Saudi officials.  

Officials identified another Saudi veteran of Afghanistan, Turki Mishal 
Dandani, as the leader of the bombing team. Both Dandani and Jehani 
are believed to be at large.  

Sixty FBI and other US investigators, as well as a team from Britain's 
Scotland Yard, have joined the investigation.  

# The Egyptian who guards the elusive Osama bin Laden had taken over 
as al-Qaeda's military commander following capture of Khalid Sheikh 
Mohammed, the mastermind of September 11, a terror expert said 
yesterday. Rohan Gunaratna, the author of Inside Al-Qaeda, said Saif 
al-Adel, who has a $US25 million ($A38 million) price on his head on 
the FBI's list of most wanted terrorists, is believed to be hiding 
along the porous Pakistan-Afghanistan border, like bin Laden.  

- agencies

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Source: "The Age" - Melbourne
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/19/1053196523425.html


Cheers, Steve..

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