Iraq captures Saudi allegedly involved in oil facility attack

Iraqi border guards have captured a Saudi who admitted he was involved in last month’s suicide attack on the Abqaiq oil facility in eastern Saudi Arabia, an Iraqi military spokesman said yesterday.

Abdullah Salah al-Harbi was apprehended on Tuesday by Iraq border guards in the desert along the border between the two countries, said Saadoun al-Jabiri, a spokesman for the Iraqi border guard force.

The spokesman quoted al-Harbi as saying that five other Saudis crossed the border with him but went missing in the Iraqi desert. Iraqi forces are searching for them, al-Jabiri said.

Al-Jabiri quoted the Saudi as telling interrogators that “the last operation I took part in was last week’s attack on oil facility in Abqaiq.”

The spokesman said al-Harbi said he was wanted by Saudi authorities who had carried out raids around his home.

The February 24 bombing at Abqaiq was the first attack on an oil facility in Saudi Arabia, which has been battling al Qaida militants since 2003. Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Suicide bombers tried to crash two explosives-laden vehicles through a gate of the sprawling facility. One collided with the gate, but guards opened fire, detonating them before they could get through, Saudi officials have said.

At least two militants and two security guards were killed.

Al-Harbi told interrogators he was headed to the predominantly Sunni northern Iraqi city of Mosul where he planned to meet cattle merchants who have links with al Qaida, the spokesman said.

“I came to Iraq to fight Americans, not Iraqis,” the spokesman quoted al-Harbi as saying. The man did not have weapons but said some Iraqis in Mosul were going to do so.

The attack in Saudi Arabia raised speculation that militants there were adopting the tactics of insurgents in Iraq, where the oil industry has been repeatedly targeted.

An al Qaida statement posted on a website indicated the group has encouraged its followers to attack oil tankers, pipelines and other facilities in Muslim countries but not wells. The document was at least a year old, but al Qaida’s branch in Saudi Arabia posted it earlier this week on an Islamic militant web forum to outline the religious justification for the attack on the Abqaiq facility.

Saudi Arabia has the world’s largest oil reserves followed by Iraq.

Saudi insurgents are believed to be active in Iraq, and Saudi citizens are said to have carried out deadly suicide attacks in the past two years.

In December 2004, a Saudi citizen survived a would-be suicide attack he was supposed to carry out in Baghdad’s western neighbourhood of Mansour.

Ahmed Abdullah al-Shayea claimed in a television interview last year that he was tricked into driving a fuel truck that was detonated by al Qaida operatives in the Christmas Day attack, killing nine people and badly injuring him.