Saudis say attacker had ties to London dissident group
YANBU, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi Arabia blamed a wanted man with links to a London-based opposition group for an attack on an oil contractor's office, saying yesterday he had slipped back into the kingdom to lead his brother and two cousins on a bloody rampage.
The attack Saturday at the offices of Houston-based
All four attackers were killed in a shootout after an hour-long police chase in which they dragged the body of an American victim from the bumper of their car and urged students at a local high school to travel to Iraq to fight the US-led occupation forces.
The leader of the attack was Mustafa Abdel-Qader Abed al-Ansari, a Saudi from the city of Medina who was wanted by security forces, according to an Interior Ministry statement.
It said Ansari left the kingdom in 1994 and joined the London-based Committee for the Defense of the Legitimate Rights, a group of Saudi dissidents who advocate overthrowing the monarchy.
''He reentered the country in an illegitimate way and infiltrated the borders to carry out despicable plans," the ministry said.
Founders of the Committee for the Defense of the Legitimate Rights said Ansari first contacted them in 1994.
Mohammed al-Masaari said Ansari came to London at age 22 after spending time with Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Afghanistan. Ansari briefly joined the group, which sent him to study English in Cambridge, and married a British woman, he said.
But Ansari ''disappeared" in 1997, Masaari said. He said he later heard he had been arrested in Yemen.
Saad Al-Faqih, another founder who has since split with Masaari, had a similar impression.
''I remember him as a very simple-minded person with little education," he said.
Muslim activists in London, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press that Britain's Scotland Yard had been pursuing Ansari for years and that its agents had questioned many Muslim activists about him.
Neither the British government nor Scotland Yard would confirm that.
In the days following the attack, Saudi officials have blamed varying interests.
Interior Minister Prince Nayef said yesterday that Al Qaeda was likely behind it. His ministry's statement linked the attack to Saudi exiles in London. The Saudi Cabinet blamed only ''external forces" interested in spreading chaos.
Crown Prince Abdullah has blamed Zionism for misguiding the attackers. And Foreign Minister Prince Saud, who made note of the lead assailant's connection to Saudi dissidents in London, said it is ''well known" that the London dissidents ''have contacts and are financed by parties that are linked to Israel."
Masaari dismissed accusations of any Israeli connection to his group.
