Attack on prince raises concerns about al-Qaida

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – The bomb was hidden inside the al-Qaida assassin’s body, and he arrived on his target’s personal plane.

The target was Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, a senior member of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family and head of the kingdom’s counterterrorism operations. The bomber, who had crossed the border from Yemen, passed at least two security checks, then detonated himself less than a yard away from the prince. Somehow, the prince survived.

But the attack, on Aug. 27 during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, has sent tremors through Saudi Arabian and Western intelligence circles. The first serious assassination attempt against a member of the Saudi ruling family in decades, the attack raised new concerns about al-Qaida’s tactics, strength, and its use of neighboring Yemen as a safe haven and training ground.

It also raised doubts about Saudi Arabia’s program for combating terrorism, which focuses on rehabilitating militants and getting them to renounce al-Qaida.

“It’s an unbelievable stroke of luck that Prince Mohammed was little injured as he was,” said a Western diplomat. “The whole Saudi approach to counter terrorism would have been challenged had he died.”

Local reports described the attack unfolding during a traditional Ramadan gathering at the prince’s palace in the coastal city of Jeddah. In interviews in the capital in recent days, Saudi interior ministry officials and Western diplomats provided information about the attack and the circumstances leading up to the prince’s encounter with the al-Qaida militant.

The assailant was Abdullah Hassan Tali Assiri, and he was number 40 on a list of 85 terrorists that the Saudi government considered most dangerous. He was a Saudi, but was based in Yemen, where al-Qaida has been gaining strength.

Al-Qaida preyed on Mohammed’s “soft approach” to combating terrorism. The prince is widely known to give personal assurances to militants and treat them with dignity if they renounce al-Qaida. Those who enter an extremist rehabilitation program are given cars, houses and jobs upon graduation. When Saudi security forces kill terrorist suspects in raids, Prince Mohammed has been known to call the families to console them.

So it was no surprise that when Assiri contacted the prince, he was receptive.

Assiri informed the prince that he needed to meet him urgently, according to Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Gen. Turki al Mansour. There were others who also wanted to renounce al-Qaida and turn themselves in, Assiri told the prince.

Assiri insisted on seeing the prince.

On the evening of Aug. 27, the prince sent his plane to the southern Saudi border city of Najran where Assiri, who had crossed from Yemen, was waiting. He was taken by the prince’s personal body guards to his house.

At some point in the evening, Assiri handed his cellphone to the prince. Some of his comrades, he told the prince, wanted to hear his assurances that they would be treated well. That was the signal that the prince was standing close to Assiri. The bomb, which according to Western diplomats and local news reports was probably hidden inside Assiri’s rectum, was triggered by the cellphone. Assiri was ripped apart – pictures of his body were later published in local newspapers and on Web sites.

The prince suffered minor injuries.