Freeh Reportedly Focusing on Key Saudi Official

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, in Saudi Arabia to press the investigation of last week’s terrorist attack on a U.S. installation, will focus on a pivotal member of the royal family described as the bottleneck in coordinating with American teams on the scene, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The Saudi official is Prince Nayif ibn Abdulaziz, the country’s long-standing interior minister. He is also described by former U.S. diplomats as the most feared official in the government and a man who runs one of the world’s most ruthless police agencies.

“It’s his job to protect Saudi interests from all comers, even allies,” a senior Clinton administration official said. “And he does it well, very well. He protects and controls the most intimate secrets of that state.”

Nayif appears to be the key to a successful--or unsuccessful--collaboration between the United States and Saudi Arabia in the investigation of the June 25 terrorist attack that killed 19 American servicemen at an air base near Dhahran.

Freeh’s talks with Nayif during his three-day visit are critical because the interior minister’s relations with American officials in the past often have been “less than cordial,” the senior official said.

Since the bombing, the Saudis have emphasized the rosier side of the relationship. Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, Saudi ambassador to the United States, went on CNN over the weekend to read a letter from Freeh praising “the professionalism, dedication and services provided by the [Saudi] Ministry of Interior.”

And the Saudi Embassy has hired the high-powered Powell-Tate public relations firm to provide the Saudi spin on next week’s congressional hearings on the bombing by the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees.

The Freeh letter uses praise to gently nudge the Saudis to cooperate, U.S. officials said. His trip, the details of which FBI officials will not discuss, is designed to directly confront the problems, they say.

Nayif’s ministry is responsible for many of the practices that have come under criticism from international human rights groups.

“Scores of political suspects, including possible prisoners of conscience, were detained [in Saudi Arabia], and up to 200 others arrested the previous year remained held without trial and without access to lawyers,” Amnesty International charged in its 1996 report on human rights around the world.

The report accuses the Saudis of torture and ill treatment of political detainees, unfair trials and arbitrary justice. Among the most unusual cases cited was that of an Indonesian reportedly beaten to death in Mecca for overstaying his visa.

Another former U.S. diplomat who had regular contact with Nayif, now fourth in line to the Saudi throne, described him as “thoroughly nasty” and compared him to Lavrenti P. Beria, secret police chief for Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

“You would not want to be the object of an investigation about information he thought you had,” the ex-envoy said. “He’d be prepared to do almost anything to get it.”

Nayif does not maintain a high public profile. In a rare public statement less than a year before the November bombing of a U.S. military installation in Riyadh, the capital, he told a British journalist that Islamic opponents to the regime numbered fewer than “the fingers of one hand.” In a public statement this year, he criticized news organizations for fomenting anti-Saudi sentiment and perpetuating “old lies” about the country’s stability.

Elsewhere Wednesday, the State Department denied reports that the investigation of the bombing is focusing on specific individuals or countries. “We’re looking throughout Saudi Arabia and beyond Saudi Arabia,” State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said.

Investigators are also looking into possible ties between the bombing and the arrest of four people entering Saudi Arabia from Jordan four months ago in a car with panels lined with 78 pounds of sophisticated plastic explosives.

Four Saudis were caught at the Saudi-Jordanian border, and the car was believed to have come from eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where both Syria and Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas are active. All four are still in custody and are being interrogated, a Saudi official said.

Times staff writer John Daniszewski in Saudi Arabia contributed to this report.