Detained Saudi Apparently Belongs To Terrorist Family
The Saudi national questioned by police in the investigation into the Boston Marathon attack shares the same last name as a major Saudi clan that includes scores of Al Qaeda operatives.
Some in the clan are senior Al Qaeda members while others are reportedly being held by the U.S. in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.
Two Saudi nationals were reportedly injured in the bombings in Boston, with one, 22-year-old foreign student Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi, initially put under armed guard at a hospital. Alharbi is reportedly studying in the U.S. on a student visa.
A large group of federal and state law enforcement agents reportedly raided Alharbi’s apartment in Revere, Mass. CNN reported the search took place by consent, according to a federal law enforcement source, meaning no search warrant was needed.
The Saudi embassy in Washington claims Alharbi is no longer under detention and is not a suspect in the bomb blasts.
While it is not clear whether the Alharbi questioned as part of the marathon probe is a member of the well-known Saudi clan, his Facebook page, reviewed by this reporter, lists him as Facebook friends with at least seven other Alharbis, located in both Boston and Saudi Arabia.
One of the Alharbis on his Facebook friends list, Ahmed Alharbi, is listed as a pharmacy technician at the Saudi Ministry of Health. Most others live in Riyadh.
The Alharbi clan has long been active in Al Qaeda. Khaled bin Ouda bin Mohammed al-Harbi, for example, is a Saudi national who joined Osama bin Laden’s mujahadeen group in the 1980s. He reportedly became an Al Qaeda member in the mid-1990s. He turned himself in to Saudi authorities in 2004 as part of an amnesty deal.
The BBC reported Khaled Alharbi was married to the daughter of Al Qaeda’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahri. He reportedly appeared with bin Laden in a video praising the 9/11 attacks.
Another top Al Qaeda operative is Adel Radi Saqr al-Wahabi al-Harbi, a Saudi national identified by the State Department as “a key member of an al Qaeda network operating in Iran.”
The State Department has offered a multi-million dollar reward for the capture of Abdel Alharbi, saying he is an Iran-based Al Qaeda facilitator who serves as the deputy to Muhsin al-Fadhl, who runs Al Qaeda’s Iran network.
On his website, former PLO operative Walid Shoebat translated a list of the Saudi government’s 85 wanted Al Qaeda members. The list includes several members of the Alharbi clan:
● Badr Saud Uwaid Al-Awufi Al-Harbi
● Muhammad Atiq Uwaid Al-Awufi Al-Harbi
● Khalid Salim Uwaid Al-Lahibi Al-Harbi
● Raed Abdullah Salem Al-Thahiri Al-Harbi
● Abdullah Abdul Rahman Muhammad Al-Harbi
● Fayez Ghuneim Humeid Al-Hijri Al-Harbi
Shoebat also points out that several Alharbi clan members are being held by the U.S. government at Guantanamo Bay, including Salim Salman Awadallah Al-Saidi Al-Harbi, Majid Abdullah Hussein Al-Harbi, Muhammad Abdullah Saqr Al-Alawi Al-Harbi, Ghanem Abdul Rahman Ghanem Al-Harbi, and Muhammad Atiq Uwaid Al-Awfi Al-Harbi.
Senator Rand: I Wasn’t Expecting That Answer
In an interview on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s WABC Radio, Senator Rand Paul said he was “surprised” by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s sworn testimony during a Senate hearing in which she claimed she did not know whether the U.S. mission in Libya was procuring or transferring weapons to Turkey and other Arab countries.
It was Paul who had raised the issue during the hearings. His inquiry focused on alleged weapons shipments out of Benghazi to arm rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The New York Times reported last month that since early 2012, the CIA has been aiding Arab governments and Turkey in obtaining and shipping weapons to the Syrian rebels. The plan mirrors one that the Times in February reported was proposed by Clinton herself.
According to The New York Times, Clinton and then-CIA Director David Petraeus concocted the plan, which called for vetting rebels and arming Syrian fighters with the assistance of Arab countries.
If Clinton knew about the arms transfers, she may have committed perjury during her Benghazi testimony.
Regarding Clinton’s testimony, Paul stated, “I was surprised that she acted as if she never even heard of the whole concept of arms coming out of Libya through Turkey, you are right, since it had been reported in several mainstream media sources that this has been going on. So I was quite surprised that she acted as if she had never heard of any of this because some of the reports said that she has been arguing for this.”
He continued: “The other thing that I think a lot of public officials and government officials do is they keep this sort of veil of deniability and the reason they can deny it is well maybe the U.S. wasn’t actually buying and transferring the arms.
“Maybe we were facilitating it. Simply coordinating with Turkish people who were doing it and they can simply try to stand by and say, ‘Well, no, we didn’t do it, the Turks did it.’ But in reality a lot of this may have involved our involvement.”