FBI seek to arrest Saudi man

The FBI has issued a nationwide bulletin seeking the arrest of an alleged associate of the suicide hijackers who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US.

The bulletin, issued last night to law enforcement agencies across the US, sought the immediate arrest of Saud AS al-Rasheed, 21, of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The FBI said the sudden bulletin was based on information developed over the last few days, and it warned police that Saud should be considered armed and dangerous.

"On August 15, 2002, material previously recovered during the war on terrorism were found to be related to several of the September 11 hijackers," the FBI said.

The materials included an image of a Saudi Arabian passport belonging to Mr al-Rasheed that had been issued in Riyadh in May 2000.

"Al-Rasheed’s current whereabouts are unknown," the FBI bulletin said. "Al-Rasheed is suspected to be associated with the September 11, 2001 hijackers.".

A picture of al-Rasheed was posted on the FBI website.

The bureau has on occasion issued alerts over the last year, but most have involved new terrorist threats and not suspected associates of the hijackers whose activities have been exhaustively investigated over the last 11 months.

In February, the FBI issued a warning during the start of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City asking law enforcement and the US public to be on the lookout for a Yemeni man and several associates who might be plotting a terrorist attack within days.

The FBI scrambled to put that warning out after information emerged that one or more people were involved. Officials said the intelligence, while deemed credible, was not specific about possible targets.

That alert identified one possible attacker as Fawaz Yahya al-Rabeei, a Yemeni citizen born in Saudi Arabia in 1979. It listed about a dozen associates of al-Rabeei, most from Saudi Arabia and Yemen.