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INTEL: MOST AL QAEDA OPERATIVES IN AFGHANISTAN ARE SAUDIS

Posted By Ruth King on October 16th, 2010

http://www.geostrategy-direct.com/geostrategy-direct/……BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY

Intel: Most Al Qaida operatives in Afghanistan are Saudis

ABU DHABI — Saudi nationals figure prominently in the Al Qaida network in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Security sources said Saudi nationals continued to serve as commanders and key operatives in the Al Qaida insurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They said Saudi Arabia has relayed information on Saudi commanders who were fighting with Taliban in the war against NATO in Afghanistan.

“There is greater knowledge of the Saudi fighters in Al Qaida and Taliban because of enhanced intelligence exchange between Riyad and Washington,” a security source said.

The source said some of the leading Saudis in Afghanistan were fugitives who fled the kingdom amid a series of suicide attacks in 2003 and 2004. They said some of the Saudis served as trainers in sabotage operations against the U.S. and Afghan militaries.

On Sept. 18, the U.S. Air Force killed a leading Saudi commander in Afghanistan. The Saudi was identified as Saad Mohammed Al Shahri, said to have been training Al Qaida and other fighters in the war against the U.S. and its NATO allies.

Al Qaida commanders Abdullah Omar Al Quraishi and Abu Atta Al Kuwaiti were also reported killed in the eastern Afghan province of Kunar.

The sources said Al Shahri was one of several hundred Saudis believed to be working in Al Qaida in Afghanistan. They said Al Shahri was a leading fugitive who fled Saudi Arabia around five years ago.

Al Shahri, a member of the Saudi clan Bani Jubairi, was identified as an aide of Hizb-e-Islami commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Al Shahri was said to have fought the Saudi regime as well as in Afghanistan under the Soviet occupation in the late 1980s.

The sources said Al Shahri was fighting for Islamic causes since he was 15. His father was a retired Saudi Army colonel who has lived in the Namas province in the southern part of the kingdom.

“After the Russian war in Afghanistan, Saad returned to Saudi Arabia, but he was showing some symptoms of mental disease,” Mohammed Mubarak Al Shahri said.

The senior Al Shahri said he spent seven years in Saudi Arabia. During that time, he married and had two children.

“He later left his family and went again to Afghanistan without telling anyone,” the elder Al Shahri said.

The Al Qaida operative was said to have taken a second wife in Afghanistan and had another three children. Al Qaida has confirmed Al Shahri’s death and was believed to have telephoned his family in Saudi Arabia.

“I received a call from an unidentified source telling me about my son Saad’s death in an air strike,” Al Shahri’s mother told the Saudi-owned daily Al Hayat. “He has been in Afghanistan for a long time.”

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