ISLAMABAD – Saudi Arabia has sought Pakistan’s help for the arrest of three Al Qaeda-linked militants allegedly hiding in Waziristan and believed to have masterminded the 2009 suicide attack on Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, the Saudi deputy interior minister, who has been at the forefront of the Kingdom’s efforts to eradicate terrorism.
Prince Muhammad, son of Interior Minister Prince Nayef, survived assassination attempt in August 2009. Abdullah Hassan Al Aseery, a suicide bomber linked to Al Qaeda spoke to Prince Muhammad a few days before the bombing and expressed a desire to turn himself in as part of the country’s terrorist rehabilitation programme. This was an apparent ploy to get admitted to the Prince’s palace.
Al Aseery is believed to have travelled to Jeddah from the Yemenite province of Marib. Saudi authorities were shocked by the suicide bombing targeting a member of the royal family since it was first such assault of its kind. They took no longer to conclude who was involved in the attack and who planned it apart from using Al Aseery for the purpose.
The investigation, with the help of friendly states like Pakistan and the United States, revealed that the other people involved in the suicide bombing or in other words the masterminds, three in number, were hiding in Waziristan and they spend their days and nights mostly in North Waziristan but sometime they also travel to South Waziristan.
“Saudi authorities have sought help of Pakistan to reach to the masterminds of attack on Prince Muhammad and they have requested for sharing of every bit of information in this regard apart from any possibility of their arrest,” a diplomatic source said. He said the information that Saudi authorities had about the Al Qaeda-linked three militants had been shared with Pakistan.
However, he expressed his inability to divulge the names of those militants. He said Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the secretary general of the Saudi National Security Council, who visited Pakistan in March also took up the issue with Pakistani leadership along with discussions on other bilateral issues with a repeat of request for the arrest of those militants wanted by Saudi Arabia.
He said that Pakistani leaders assured Prince Bandar of all possible cooperation to reach the people believed by Riyadh to have masterminded the attack on an important person of the Saudi royal family.
