4 Saudis Confess to Bombing That Killed Americans

In a Saudi television broadcast Monday, four Saudi nationals confessed to planting the Nov. 13 car bomb that killed five Americans and two Indians at a U.S.-run military training center in Riyadh. About 60 people were injured in the deadliest terrorist attack conducted against American interests in the kingdom.

U.S. officials have not yet had access to the four young men, Pentagon officials said Monday. But the suspects’ stories are consistent with leads that U.S. investigators had been working on with the Saudi government, they said.

Yet U.S. officials have come to a different conclusion from that of their Saudi counterparts about the implications of the arrests.

“The four [suspects] seem to represent a home-grown phenomenon that is largely independent of any outside connection other than some ideological leanings,” a senior Pentagon official said. A U.S. investigation has tentatively concluded that no patron state ordered or sponsored the attack.

But in interviews Monday, Saudi officials said they believe the four men were directly or indirectly manipulated by a foreign power, in part because they used sophisticated explosives and none are missing from the Saudis’ inventory. Among the foreign countries mentioned were Iran and Sudan.

The four men were identified as Abdulaziz Fahd Nasser, Riad Hajri, Muslih Shamrani and Khaled Ahmed Said.

In their confessions, the four said they had fought at an unspecified time during the Afghanistan conflict; one claimed to have fought in Bosnia-Herzegovina as well. The explosives used in the bombing, as well as some Kalashnikov rifles, were smuggled from neighboring Yemen, they added.

The men also said they were influenced by Saudi dissident Mohammed Masari, who runs the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR) from exile in London, and Osama ibn Laden, a wealthy Saudi who is known to have bankrolled Arab participation in the Afghan war and other militant Islamic causes, largely from a base in Sudan.

The four suspects, who wore beards and red-and-white headdresses, also said they were inspired by Islamic extremists in Algeria and Egypt. The confessions were reportedly virtually identical. The men’s motives remain unclear.

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After considering several Saudi facilities and the homes and workplaces of American residents, the alleged bombers said, they chose the U.S.-run military facility because of its open parking lot, which provided easy access.

They were planning additional operations but were apprehended, Nasser said in the broadcast.

Masari vehemently denied knowing any of the suspects or urging dissident Saudis to attack the facilities of Saudi Arabia or its allies.

U.S. officials said they were notified of the arrests only hours before the public announcement. The United States has no extradition treaty with Saudi Arabia, so even in the unlikely event that Washington made a formal request for the suspects to be turned over for trial, the Saudis would almost certainly deny it, the officials added.