ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 25, 1997 TAG: 9703250092
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: LOS ANGELES TIMES|
Two explosions over the past 17 months in Saudi Arabia have killed 25 Americans, including 19 servicemen.
After months of frustration with Saudi Arabia over its handling of a bombing last June that killed 19 U.S. servicemen stationed there, U.S. investigators believe that the arrest in Canada of an Iranian-educated Saudi may be a major break in the case.
The suspect is believed to belong to the terrorist group thought responsible for the attack.
The FBI is now pressing for access to Hani Abdel-Rahim Hussein Sayegh, who was picked up last Tuesday as he was shopping with a friend in downtown Ottawa. ``This is a very important development,'' a senior Clinton administration official said. ``It has the potential to be our first big break.''
But in a telephone interview Monday evening from his Ottawa detention center, Sayegh vehemently denied any involvement in either of two explosions over the past 17 months in Saudi Arabia that have killed 25 Americans.
He said through an interpreter that any alleged role on his part, including reports that he drove one of the trucks involved in the June explosion at a military housing complex in eastern Saudi Arabia, was impossible because he had been in Syria for two years before the blast.
The administration official, however, said Sayegh has been a focus of the investigation for `some time.'' He has been in Canada, where he had applied for political asylum, since August.
Sayegh was taken into custody as a possible security threat to Canada.
If FBI investigators gain access to him in Canada - or perhaps later in the United States - it would be the first time they would have talked to any suspect believed directly linked to either of the two Saudi bombings.
Four suspects in the November 1995 attack on a U.S. military headquarters in Riyadh were beheaded before the FBI had a chance to talk with them.
Saudi officials have said they believe the perpetrators of the June 1996 bombing were Shiite Muslims from eastern Saudi Arabia linked to an underground cell of Saudi Hezbollah - or Party of God - which also has members in Syria, Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley and Iran.
Sayegh, 28, fits part of that profile. In the interview, he said that he is from a Shiite family in Qutif on Saudi Arabia's eastern coast. He readily admitted that he is a political dissident but denied affiliation with any formal group, including Saudi Hezbollah.
He refused to spell out why he opposes the existing Saudi regime, for fear of retaliation against his wife, 3-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son, who he said are still in his homeland. In Syria, he said, he had been involved in tracking human rights violations in Saudi Arabia.
Canadian officials would not confirm that the United States is seeking Sayegh's extradition. But in the interview, he said he had been told that he could be handed over to American authorities.
In asserting his innocence, Sayegh posed two questions: ``If I were in fact the one who planted the bomb, why would I have come to Canada via Boston?'' where he might have been arrested by U.S. officials.
``And if I participated in the explosion, why would my wife [who had been in Syria with him] have visited Saudi right after the explosion, since the dangers would be obvious?''
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