Syria Reportedly Rebuffed Bid to Nab Alleged Terrorist

Months before the June bombing of a U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia, Syria refused to help Saudi authorities capture a Saudi dissident who is alleged to be the mastermind of the terrorist blast, according to Arab sources and court documents.

The Saudi government was seeking the dissident, Ahmed Ibrahim Ahmad Mughassil, because it suspected him of involvement in the earlier bombing of a U.S. military facility in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and believed that he was planning further attacks.

Mughassil was with the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, a country dominated by neighboring Syria. But Arab sources said Syria declined to help apprehend him because it was unwilling to risk an armed clash with Hezbollah, a radical Islamic group that draws support from Syria and Iran.

As a result, Mughassil, a leader of the Saudi branch of Hezbollah, remained at large. He is now listed by security officials in Canada as one of the “known conspirators” in the June 25 truck bomb explosion that killed 19 American airmen at the Khobar Towers housing complex, a U.S. military residence in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

Mughassil is named in court papers filed in Canada in connection with last month’s arrest there of another Khobar Towers suspect, Hani Abdel Rahim Hussein Sayegh. According to the Canadians, he “was the driver of the car which signaled the explosives-laden truck to enter the parking lot” at Khobar Towers.

Mughassil “has been identified as the mastermind behind the bombing,” the Canadian documents say. He is believed to be in Iran, Arab sources said, in one of several indications of possible Iranian involvement in the bombing.

Bits of information suggesting an Iranian link to the Khobar Towers blast have been surfacing for months, but U.S. officials maintain that the investigation is continuing and that they have reached no conclusions. Convincing evidence of Iranian involvement would put enormous pressure on the Clinton administration to retaliate in some forceful way, but any such move would carry political and strategic risks.

The new information about Syria’s rebuff of the Saudi effort to catch Mughassil appears to provide a fresh example of Syria’s long-reported role in tolerating the activities of Middle Eastern terrorists.

Syrian officials provided partial confirmation of the account because, they said, it shows that Damascus had no role in plotting or carrying out the Khobar Towers bombings. Syria has been trying to get itself removed from the State Department’s list of nations that sponsor terrorism, a quest that would be doomed if it is proved that Damascus supported the Khobar attack.

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The new account from Arab sources shows that the Saudis initially linked Mughassil to the November 1995 Riyadh bombing, which killed seven people, including five Americans. Mughassil was well-known as a leading Shiite Muslim dissident, and the Saudi authorities had suspected that Shiites from the Saudi Hezbollah group had struck the U.S. military facility and might go after another.

However, four men eventually beheaded for their alleged participation in the Riyadh bombing were reported to be dissidents from Saudi Arabia’s majority Sunni branch of Islam. They said in televised confessions that they had been influenced by a radical Sunni preacher in Jordan.

Both the Shiite and Sunni dissidents oppose the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia, which they say desecrates the land of the Prophet Muhammad, and have denounced the Saudi royal family for welcoming the Americans.