U.S. to Deport Man Linked to Saudi Blast

The United States ordered the deportation Thursday of Hani Abdel Rahim Hussein Sayegh, the dissident linked by Saudi and American officials to the 1996 bombing that killed 19 U.S. Air Force personnel stationed in Saudi Arabia.

The decision may mark the formal collapse of a high-drama case that once appeared to offer Washington its only promising independent lead in solving the attack and in determining whether any foreign powers were involved. Saudi officials have long tried to blame Iran for the incident, although allegations have diminished since Saudi rapprochement with Iran began last year.

The issue now is where to send Sayegh, a Saudi Shiite Muslim who spent years in Iran and Syria before fleeing to Canada. There he was seized and extradited to the United States last year amid much fanfare. “We’re not yet sure where he’ll go,” a State Department official said. “We can’t just put him out on a boat and push it off the dock. We have to have a country.”

The order to deport Sayegh could well offer one last chance for the United States to try to pressure him into cooperating in exchange for a plea bargain. As leverage, the the U.S. could hold out the possibility of returning him to Saudi Arabia, where he could be beheaded if found guilty of the bombing. Saudi Arabia is the only country that earlier expressed interest in getting Sayegh back.

People facing deportation from the United States technically can be sent back to any of several places, including their country of nationality, country of last residence and, depending on circumstances, even the last country before entry into the United States, Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Russ Bergeron said.

Sayegh could also request to be sent to a certain country. “There’s no way to predict where he’ll go,” Bergeron added.

The United States has six months to find a place to which to deport him; after that period, a new law stipulates that he must be released or the government must show he is a threat who requires detention.

The U.S. case against Sayegh fell apart because of a series of legal glitches and mistakes that allowed him to renege on the original plea agreement in Canada, which was made to prevent his deportation to Saudi Arabia.

That agreement called for him to tell all he knew about the June, 1996, truck bomb attack on the Khobar Towers military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in exchange for a 10-year sentence for an earlier unsuccessful plot against other, unspecified American targets. That sentence would be lighter than the one he might receive if convicted of the bombing.

But Sayegh argued that he never understood the terms because he had no counsel and had to rely on a volunteer interpreter at the Canadian detention center whose English was limited. He also was not given a copy of the agreement until after he arrived in the United States nor told that he would still be eligible for deportation to Saudi Arabia at the end of his prison term.

Saudi officials claim that Sayegh was a driver and lookout for the attack on the housing compound for U.S. troops serving in the Persian Gulf. Although he has admitted anti-government activities and training in Iran, Sayegh has consistently denied any links with the bombing, and independent U.S. evidence is weak, say lawyers close to the case.

Last fall, the charges against him were dropped due to lack of sufficient evidence for prosecution.