JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — A letter from Osama bin Laden and a telephone call made from Iran by his son Saad are linked to a series of al Qaeda actions targeting Westerners in Saudi Arabia, say Western diplomats and Saudi intelligence officials.
The letter from the al Qaeda leader was found on the body of Yosif Salih Fahd Ala’yeeri, one of 19 attackers involved in a closely coordinated series of bombings in Riyadh in May, who was killed in a May 31 shootout with security forces in central Saudi Arabia. Saudi authorities have refused to divulge the contents of the letter, confirming only that it was found on the dead terrorist.
Two days before the bombings, which killed 34 persons, including nine Americans and two Britons, Saad bin Laden made a telephone call from somewhere in Iran to a member of the same al Qaeda gang, according to a high-ranking Western diplomat who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
The unidentified Saudi suspect was arrested as part of a crackdown on Islamist militants and their supporters after the May bombings. Authorities said he had revealed the details of the telephone conversation between himself and Saad bin Laden under interrogation.
Investigators, meanwhile, have disclosed that British Airways (BA) halted flights to the kingdom last week after Saudi authorities learned of a plot to shoot down one of its planes with a missile. The scheme is believed to have been the work of the same wide network, directed by Osama bin Laden and other close associates, including Saad bin Laden, to which the Riyadh gang belonged.
Intelligence about the plot is likely to have come from CIA investigators working with the Saudi intelligence agencies in the kingdom, and with whom the Saudis are now sharing sensitive information about al Qaeda.
The attack was foiled when a Saudi police special unit ambushed a group of 10 terrorism suspects who had escaped a shootout in Riyadh the night before. Three Saudi officers died in the second operation and five of the suspects were captured.
Details of the planned missile attack were found in documents in a car used by the gang, and BA announced it was suspending flights to Saudi Arabia the following day.
Saudi foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir partially confirmed the details in an interview yesterday with CNN.
“One of the cells that was broken up, there were materials that were — there were maps, there were certain things that indicated that there was a high level of interest in British Airways,” Mr. al-Jubeir said.
“And I think that’s the conclusion that was arrived at by British Airways, when we notified the British government of it, was that there may be a threat there.”
BA normally operates four flights a week to Riyadh and Jidda. Airport officials said in interviews that three of the BA flights to Riyadh land and take off during the night, and the al Qaeda gang was afraid of accidentally shooting down a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight, which would be full of Muslims.
They said the terrorists had decided to aim for a BA service introduced for the summer season, which was scheduled to take off on Friday mornings.
There have been fears of a missile attack against a civilian airliner in Saudi Arabia since May last year, when a shoulder-launched SA7 missile was fired at an American fighter plane taking off from the Prince Sultan Air Base.
Earlier, a pile of explosives had been found outside the base, with another al Qaeda letter attached, demanding that all American forces withdraw.
Much of the intelligence now coming out of Saudi Arabia is emerging from the CIA’s interrogation of suspects, which is given more credibility by international antiterrorism experts than previous details provided by the Saudi Interior Ministry.
Some of the best information is believed to be coming from Ali Abdul Rahman al-Faqaasi al-Ghamdi, accused of masterminding the Riyadh attacks, who later surrendered in Jidda. Mr. al-Ghamdi met Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora cave complex in southern Afghanistan before the fall of the Taliban regime.
It has not been revealed whether Mr. al-Ghamdi was the source of the information about Saad bin Laden’s phone call from Iran, but the revelation has severely affected relations between Riyadh and Tehran. The Iranians have consistently denied U.S. contentions that the Riyadh bombings were directed from their territory.
Iran has declined to reveal the identities of terrorism suspects it is holding, other than saying that they include “important and less important members” of al Qaeda.
But U.S. officials and Arab press reports say Saad din laden, who like his father has been stripped of Saudi citizenship, is among those being held. It is not clear whether he was in custody at the time he made the phone call to Saudi Arabia in May.
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