A suspected Saudi al Qaeda militant, who had appeared in a videotape with Osama bin Laden, was flown back to the kingdom from Iran after he surrendered under a government amnesty, state television said this evening.
It said Khaled al-Harbi, also known as Abu Suleiman al-Makki, had been on the Iranian-Afghan border and had contacted Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran in response to the amnesty.
Television showed a wheelchair-bound and bearded Harbi being carried off a plane on arrival in the kingdom with his family. It did not say when he surrendered or returned to Saudi Arabia.
A Saudi security source said Harbi was the man seen talking with Saudi-born al Qaeda leader bin Laden in a videotape in which the two praised the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on US cities.
He said Harbi had fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia. "He is big in the sense that he is one of the Saudis that were close to bin Laden," the security source said, adding that Harbi had not been involved in a spate of militant attacks in Saudi Arabia claimed by al Qaeda.
Harbi was the third person to surrender since Saudi Arabia announced on June 23rd a one-month government amnesty aimed primarily at militants who have attacked Westerners, government targets and energy sites in the world's biggest oil exporter.
Iran said Harbi was repatriated at his own request. "Mr Khaled al-Harbi..., following Saudi Arabia's annoucement of an amnesty, entered our country illegally from a neighbouring country and asked to be handed over to his own country," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in a statement.