Dubai: The main suspect in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers residence at a US military base in Saudi Arabia has been captured after nearly 20 years on the run, a Saudi-owned newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Asharq Al Awsat said Ahmad Al Mughassil, leader of the Hezbollah Al Hejaz who had been indicted by a US court for the attack that killed 19 US service personnel and wounded almost 500 people, had been captured in the Lebanese capital Beirut and transferred to Riyadh.
Saudi authorities were not immediately available to comment.
Saudi Arabia and the United States have accused Iran of orchestrating the truck-bomb attack. Iran has denied any responsibility for the attack.
Asharq Al Awsat quoted official Saudi sources as saying Saudi security personnel had received information about the presence of 48-year-old Mughassil in Beirut.
“The discovery of Mughassil and his arrest in Lebanon and his subsequent transfer to Saudi Arabia is a qualitative achievement, for the man had been in disguise in a way that made it hard to identify him,” Asharq Al Awsat said, without elaborating on when he was captured and who captured him.
The daily said that Saudi Arabia had asked Iran since 1997 to hand Al Mughassil over despite reports that he had died. The Saudis also wanted three other suspects linked to the Khobar Towers blast, Saeed Bin Ali Al Hoori, 40, Ebrahim Saleh Mohammad Al Yaqoob and Abdul Kareem Hussain Mohammad Al Nasser.
Saudi Arabia never accused Iran officially of being behind the blast and reports said that Riyadh resisted heavy pressure from Washington to blame Tehran for the deadly attack.
In 2006, a US federal judge ordered Iran to pay $254 million to the families of 17 US service personnel killed in the attack in a judgement entered against the Iranian government, its security ministry and the Revolutionary Guards after they failed to respond to a lawsuit initiated more than four years earlier.
The 209-page ruling had found that the truck bomb involved in the attack was assembled at a base in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley operated by Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards, and the attack was approved by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
— with inputs from Reuters
