Bin Laden Confidant Surrenders

U.S. officials played down the importance of a Saudi-born cleric who surrendered Tuesday to Saudi Arabian authorities and was described as an Al Qaeda member and confidant of Osama bin Laden.

Khaled Harbi surrendered to Saudi diplomats in Iran and was transported to Saudi Arabia, where he will be held under an amnesty program announced by the kingdom’s rulers last month.

Television images showed Harbi, disabled and in a wheelchair, being pushed through the airport in Riyadh. Saudi officials said in TV reports that Harbi would be treated for unspecified medical conditions, but they did not detail what he was wanted for. Earlier broadcasts showed Harbi, unable to walk, being hoisted by pilots down the steps from a plane.

“Thank God, thank God.... I called the embassy, and we were very well received,” Harbi said at the airport.

Harbi described the amnesty as a “generous offer” and urged other militants to take advantage of it.

The cleric is considered close to Bin Laden because of a 2001 videotape showing a gathering at which a man reported to be Harbi appeared with Bin Laden as the Al Qaeda chief spoke glowingly of the success of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

However, U.S. officials said Tuesday that Harbi had had little effectiveness lately and that his former value was as an extremist speaker and “sounding board.”

“It’s easy to overstate his importance,” one U.S. official said. “It’s clear that a lot of bad guys have been caught, but there remain a lot of bad guys out there. This isn’t going to be the critical blow” to the terrorist organization.

Analysts at the CIA and other intelligence agencies do not see Harbi as a likely source of valuable information on Bin Laden’s whereabouts or the Al Qaeda terrorist network’s operational activities.

“I’d be cautious in terms of characterizing him in terms of a significant Al Qaeda figure,” another U.S. official said. “He’s not an operational planner or anything like that. What he is really is an extremist cleric who had more influence and impact around the time we saw him in that Bin Laden video.”

Mansour Nogaidan, a journalist in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, and former militant, was quoted by Associated Press as saying Harbi had lost the use of his legs while fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Harbi once preached at a mosque in Mecca, Nogaidan said, but left Saudi Arabia and traveled to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Saudi Interior Ministry said in a statement that Harbi had contacted the Saudi Embassy in Tehran. Harbi became the third insurgent to surrender under the amnesty program, which Saudi Arabia offered after the kidnapping and slaying of American engineer Paul M. Johnson Jr. and a subsequent shootout between security forces and radicals that killed a top militant.

Prince Nayif ibn Abdulaziz, the Saudi interior minister, said the amnesty program would not be extended, and he has hinted at the possibility of harsh treatment of insurgents caught later.