Saudis Say Qaeda Chief Killed After U.S. Man Beheaded

By Ghaida Ghantous

Saudi authorities said on Saturday they had killed al Qaeda leader Abdulaziz al-Muqrin and three other prominent militants after they beheaded U.S. hostage Paul Johnson.

State television broadcast pictures of the bodies of Muqrin and the three others, saying all had been involved in the recent surge of violence against foreigners in the kingdom, and said 12 others had been arrested.

"This is a massive blow to the militants," a Saudi security source said.

The men were killed in a shootout Friday night as they tried to dispose of the body of Johnson, who was beheaded after the Saudi government refused to free Islamist prisoners by a Friday deadline set by Muqrin’s cell.

Muqrin’s group had posted photographs of Johnson’s severed head on a Web site, six days after the 49-year-old aviation engineer was kidnapped in Riyadh.

The televised pictures of the four dead militants appeared aimed at refuting a purported al Qaeda statement posted on an Islamist Web site which denied Muqrin — the kingdom’s most wanted man — was dead.

An Interior Ministry statement read out on television named the other three dead militants as Faisal al-Dakheel, Turki al-Muteiri and Ibrahim al-Dreihim. Dakheel was wanted for killings including that of an American in Riyadh, it said.

Muteiri was one of the militants who escaped after an attack on foreigners in the Gulf city of Khobar in May and Dreihim had been involved in preparation of the bombing of an expatriate residential compound in Riyadh in November, it said. "Special security forces who have been following the crimes of murder and the kidnapping of residents in Riyadh uncovered the presence of four people with direct links to those events at nine p.m. (1700 GMT) Friday at a petrol station in Malaz (a district of Riyadh)," the ministry statement said.

"Immediately security forces surrounded them and there was a fierce exchange of fire which resulted in the deaths of all four. It also resulted in the death of one member of the security forces and the wounding of two others."

The statement said security forces found three cars, including one used in an attack earlier this month against a British Broadcasting Corporation television crew in Riyadh.

They also found guns, three rocket propelled grenades, 16 pipe bombs, 10 hand grenades and currency worth around $37,000, it said.

The 32-year-old Muqrin, driven by hatred for the United States and its Arab allies, was Saudi Arabia’s most wanted al Qaeda leader.

He was a veteran of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war and one of a hit squad that tried to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia in 1995, said Mohsen al-Awajy, an expert on Islamic militants.

"He’s a killer. He wanted to kill as many people as he could before he died," Awajy said.

Muqrin spent two years in an Ethiopian jail before extradition in 1988 to Saudi Arabia where he was tortured in prison, he added.

Saudi officials, once chided by their U.S. allies as being soft on terrorism, will present his killing as a major setback for Saudi-born Osama bin Laden.

The U.S. embassy, in a statement issued before Muqrin’s death, said more attacks were likely and the State Department warned Americans of a risk of violence across the Gulf region, after urging many to leave Saudi Arabia this week.

Johnson was the third American killed in Riyadh in the past 10 days, stepping up pressure on thousands of U.S. citizens and other foreigners vital to the economy of the world’s biggest oil exporter and on the Saudi royal family, which bin Laden has sworn to overthrow for its close alliance with Washington.

Shortly before Muqrin’s death his group published three pictures on an Islamist Web site of what looked like Johnson’s severed, bloodied head. They showed the head placed on the back of a body in orange overalls and with a knife propped up against the mustachioed face.

Johnson worked for defense contractor Lockheed Martin on the manufacture of Apache helicopter gunships, used by both U.S. and Israeli military forces — a job his killers said justified his execution.

The beheading followed a spate of bombings and attacks on oil companies and expatriate workers blamed on Muqrin’s men. Militants killed 22 foreigners at oil offices and residential compounds in the eastern oil city of Khobar last month. RIYADH (Reuters)