Disabled Saudi militant believed to be top Al-Qaeda figure surrenders:
Saudi Arabia announced that a disabled militant, suspected of being a top Al-Qaeda figure close to Osama bin Laden and who had been hiding along the Iran-Afghan border, has surrendered under a royal amnesty.
'The wanted Saudi Khaled bin Odeh bin Mohammed al-Harbi, alias Abu Suleiman al-Makki, who had been in the Iranian-Afghan border region, contacted the (Saudi) embassy' in Iran, an interior ministry official said, quoted on state media.....
The official announcement did not give more details, but Harbi, a native of the holy city of Mecca, is known here to have fought in Afghanistan alongside Al-Qaeda chief bin Laden in the early 1980s, during the Soviet invasion.
Harbi, who was wounded while fighting in Bosnia, taught courses in Islam at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest site, but dropped out of sight after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
He is believed to have fled to Afghanistan via Iran at the time, and appeared alongside bin Laden in a video aired by Qatar-based Al-Jazeera news channel in December 2001, during which he claimed that Muslim scholars 'bless' the extremists' actions......
Harbi is only the third militant to surrender since the month-long amnesty was offered on June 23, but does not figure on a most-wanted list of suspected Islamist militants, probably because he was not in the country."
Saudi Arabia announced that a disabled militant, suspected of being a top Al-Qaeda figure close to Osama bin Laden and who had been hiding along the Iran-Afghan border, has surrendered under a royal amnesty.
'The wanted Saudi Khaled bin Odeh bin Mohammed al-Harbi, alias Abu Suleiman al-Makki, who had been in the Iranian-Afghan border region, contacted the (Saudi) embassy' in Iran, an interior ministry official said, quoted on state media.....
The official announcement did not give more details, but Harbi, a native of the holy city of Mecca, is known here to have fought in Afghanistan alongside Al-Qaeda chief bin Laden in the early 1980s, during the Soviet invasion.
Harbi, who was wounded while fighting in Bosnia, taught courses in Islam at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest site, but dropped out of sight after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
He is believed to have fled to Afghanistan via Iran at the time, and appeared alongside bin Laden in a video aired by Qatar-based Al-Jazeera news channel in December 2001, during which he claimed that Muslim scholars 'bless' the extremists' actions......
Harbi is only the third militant to surrender since the month-long amnesty was offered on June 23, but does not figure on a most-wanted list of suspected Islamist militants, probably because he was not in the country."
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