Washington — A disabled Muslim sheik who fled Saudi Arabia to congratulate Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 hijackings surrendered yesterday — one of only three militants so far to take advantage of a month-long amnesty offered by the Saudi government.
Khaled al-Harbi was flown from Tehran to Riyadh yesterday and urged other militants to surrender. Saudi television showed the mullah being carried from an aircraft, and officials said his surrender was significant because he was considered an associate of Mr. bin Laden.
“He is a big fish,” Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to Britain, said in a television interview. “He will be kept in prison and interrogated for some time.”
The Saudi amnesty guarantees only that those who surrender will not be executed.
In a videotape made in Afghanistan weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, Mr. al-Harbi told Mr. bin Laden, “You have given us hope.”
The videotaped conversation between the radical mullah and the al-Qaeda leader was the first proof that Mr. bin Laden had ordered the attacks. “People used to doubt you and only a few would follow you until this huge event,” Mr. al-Harbi told Mr. bin Laden during a clandestine meeting at a Kandahar guest house while U.S.-led forces were battling the former Taliban regime.
“[Mr. al-Harbi] is big in the sense that he is one of the Saudis that were close to bin Laden,” a Saudi security source told Reuters yesterday.
However, Mr. al-Harbi was not on the list of 26 top terrorist suspects sought by the Saudi government and is not considered to have been involved in the spate of attacks in the kingdom over the past year. Nor has he been named as a top terrorist suspect by U.S. authorities.
Although several hundred suspects have been rounded up in a Saudi crackdown in recent weeks, Mr. al-Harbi is only the third militant to surrender under the month-long amnesty offered by the Saudi ruling family as it struggles to contain attacks aimed at foreigners and the country's oil infrastructure.
Mr. al-Harbi, also known as Abu Suleiman al-Makki, apparently contacted the Saudi embassy in Tehran and Saudi diplomats arranged to have him flown out of Iran. He arrived in his homeland with a woman and a boy, presumed to be his wife and son.
Saudi television showed Mr. al-Harbi, in a wheelchair, thanking the ruling family for the amnesty offer and urging others to surrender. “There is no doubt this is an opportunity which every wise man who has faith in his heart should take advantage of and return to this country,” he said.
Mr. al-Harbi, believed to be in his 40s, was known as a fiery and radical teacher of Islam in the holy city of Mecca, but disappeared shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. He apparently reached Afghanistan some weeks later after travelling through Iran. During his videotaped meeting with Mr. bin Laden, he said he had expected to find him hiding in a cave to escape U.S. bombing attacks. Instead, the al-Qaeda leader greeted him in a sparsely furnished guesthouse in Kandahar, shortly before Mr. bin Laden disappeared.
By the time the taped meeting was broadcast, he was believed to be hiding somewhere along the remote and rugged Afghan-Pakistan border. His whereabouts remain unknown nearly three years after the attacks and despite massive U.S. efforts to kill or capture him.
Yesterday's publicity given Mr. al-Harbi's repatriation by Saudi Arabia's state-controlled television may be an indication that the kingdom is hoping to persuade others to take advantage of the amnesty.
So far, only one of the 26 militants on the Saudi most-wanted list has surrendered; 12 others have been killed or captured.
Al-Qaeda has rejected the Saudi amnesty offer, calling it a “desperate attempt to halt the jihad [holy war] in the Arabian peninsula,” according to several websites linked to the Islamic militant organization.
Despite the low response to the amnesty offer, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz said it would not be extended beyond the July 23 deadline.
Prince Turki, the ambassador, said he expects others to surrender soon under the amnesty. “They have been living in caves and scrounging for food,” he said.
