Jeddah, Asharq Al-Awsat- Saudi Arabia has forwarded the names of 18 of its most wanted terrorists to Interpol and asked the international agency to track them down, a senior security official said.
Major General Mansour al Turki, official spokesman for the Interior Ministry, denied the latest submission was linked to a lack of cooperation with countries thought to be sheltering a number of Islamic militants.
Handing over suspects, al Turki said, went beyond the remit of the international agency, as it was a sovereign decision dependent on each country’s laws and the presence of bilateral agreements to extradite wanted suspects.
His comments echoed earlier statements by Maj. Gen. Ali al Obaishi, director of Saudi branch of Interpol, who indicated the Kingdom had submitted the names of 18 wanted terrorists thought to be currently living in other countries, which he did not name.
A Saudi security source was quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency, “The Kingdom is looking forward to increased cooperation with Syria, Yemen , Iran , and Iraq in tracing and arresting the suspects. It has also sought assistance from Mauritania”, where one man is thought to have fled. But he said it had had little response from these countries.
Speaking at Interpol”s annual conference in Berlin, al Obaishi said, “We ask Interpol to double its efforts to encourage governments to acts. If we want someone and we know he is hiding a certain country, and that country does nothing, it”s very frustrating for us.”
The names submitted to Interpol are those of two wanted terrorists on the previous list of 26, Talib al Talib, and Abdullah al Rushud, in addition to suspects whose names had appeared in the list of 36 most wanted, divided into two groups: those believed to be hiding in Saudi Arabia who number 15, with seven still unaccounted for: Fahed al Juwayr, Mohammad al Suwaylimi, Mohammad Salih al Ghaith, Abdullah Abdulaziz al Towayjiri, Walid Mutliq al Radadi, Abdullah Mehya, Shalash al Shamri, Ibrahim Abdullah al Matiri.
Islamic militants in the second are believed to be outside Saudi Arabia. They are 15 Saudis, 3 Chadians, a Kuwaiti, a Yemeni, and a Mauritanian. No new information on their fate has been obtained recently, with the exception of the Saudi Fayiz Ayyib who handed himself in Lebanon , a day after the list was published, and the Yemeni Zayd Hassan Mohammad Hmayd who was arrested in Yemen but has yet to be handed over to the Kingdom.