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Saudi confirms death of top Al-Qaeda pair in gunbattle

Saudi confirms death of top Al-Qaeda pair in gunbattle - Yahoo! UK & Ireland News

RIYADH (AFP) - Saudi Arabia said its security forces killed the Al-Qaeda chief in the kingdom and the Moroccan mastermind of the Madrid train bombings in a three-day gunbattle which dealt a heavy blow to the terror network.

Saud al-Otaibi, "head of the gang" responsible for a string of shootings and bombings since May 2003, and Abdel Karim al-Mejati were among 15 extremists killed in Al-Qassim, some 320 kilometers (200 miles) north of Riyadh and viewed as a haven for Islamist militants, the interior ministry said.

The battle, which ended on Tuesday, was the bloodiest in a nearly two-year-old campaign by security forces against Islamist militants behind the wave of attacks in the conservative Muslim Gulf country.

The killing of Otaibi, whom the ministry portrayed as the militants' chief and identified by his middle name of al-Qotaini, and Mejati, had previously been reported but not confirmed in an official statement.

Interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Mansur al-Turki told AFP on Thursday that the "initial investigation" showed the pair were among those killed.

The interior ministry named 10 of the 15 killed in the gunbattle, one of whom was Mejati's son, Adam, and named three of six militants who were captured, five of them wounded.

Saleh al-Oufi, who was alleged to be Al-Qaeda's chief in the oil-rich kingdom and whom a Saudi dissident group had said was killed in the clashes, was not mentioned. It was not clear if he was among those whose names were withheld.

Otaibi and Mejati, whom the ministry said held French citizenship and entered Saudi Arabia on a forged passport, figured on Riyadh's most-wanted list of 26 militants.

All but three on the list, including Oufi, are now confirmed to have been killed or arrested.

Mejati faced an outstanding 20-year jail term handed down in absentia by a Moroccan court in December 2003 for his role in that year's Casablanca bombings in which 45 people died.

Moroccan police believe Mejati was one of the ringleaders of a homegrown Islamic militant movement called the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM), which is also believed to have been behind the March 2004 Madrid train bombings, in which 191 people were killed and 1,900 wounded.

The Saudi interior ministry did not mention Mejati's alleged connection to the Casablanca and Madrid attacks. But it described him as an expert in manufacturing bombs who was previously in Afghanistan and took part in attacks in Saudi Arabia, including "the abduction and killing of a (foreign) resident."

The reference was apparently to American engineer Paul Johnson, who was taken hostage and beheaded last June.

Security forces shot dead Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin, head of the so-called "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula," and three associates in Riyadh shortly after the group posted photos on the Internet showing the beheading.

The interior ministry said that Otaibi was named "head of the gang" after Muqrin's death.

This conflicted with past reports that Oufi was chosen as Muqrin's successor. Late last year, there were claims that Otaibi replaced Oufi after he was killed by security forces.

The ministry statement gave a litany of attacks in the kingdom over the past two years in which the militants killed or arrested during the Al-Qassim gunbattle were involved.

The attacks, and a series of firefights between security forces and Al-Qaeda suspects, have cost the lives of 90 civilians, 39 security personnel and 108 militants since May 2003, according to official figures.

But the ministry also identified several of the militants as active contributors to Islamist websites, which they use to spread their "misleading propaganda," a reference to the wide use of the Internet by Saudi and other extremists in the region.

The ministry said among those in custody was Hamad al-Humaidi, one of the theoreticians of the ideology of "takfeer" -- branding other Muslims as infidels in order to legitimize violence against them.

Authorities previously said that 14 security personnel were wounded in the confrontation, which was follow

April 10, 2005 at 09:22 AM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home