Word: saudi
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Ahmed Omar Abu Ali says he survived torture in a Saudi prison. Now the 23-year-old American, indicted on questionable charges of involvement in an alleged al-Qaeda plot to assassinate President George W. Bush, faces another tough challenge: the puzzling vagaries of post-9/11 U.S. justice. The son of Jordanian immigrants from Falls Church, Va., Abu Ali was arrested in a security sweep on June 9, 2003, while taking an exam at the Islamic University of Medina. He then languished for months in a Saudi jail. He was interrogated and, his family claims, tortured. All the while...
Perhaps their toughest yet. Though U.S. and Saudi investigators say they have strong suspicions that Abu Ali was a committed al-Qaeda believer keen to plan terrorist attacks, neither country could tie him to a specific operation in the works. The circumstances of his Saudi detention will also be an issue. Once the Saudis decided they didn't have much of a case, they believed they were doing the U.S. a favor by letting the FBI park Abu Ali there, says a source close to the case. The Americans insist the Saudis were not merely keeping...
...case appears to be based largely on evidence gathered by the foreign-intelligence service of a Saudi regime that has scant regard for human rights. The best witnesses against Abu Ali, who vehemently denies all the charges, are other prisoners in Saudi jails or members of the Saudi domestic-security service who conducted the interrogations. But, acknowledges a senior U.S. counterterrorism official, "it's unlikely we'll ever get them here to testify." One key witness is dead: the al-Qaeda operative with whom Abu Ali allegedly discussed assassinating Bush was killed in a shootout with the Saudis in September...
...family have gone public with accusations that he was tortured while in Saudi custody. During his first appearance in a Virginia court, he offered to strip down and show his scars. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia reject the accusations. In a brief filed by the U.S., prosecutors say neither consular officials and FBI agents who visited Abu Ali in detention nor an American doctor who examined him after the Saudis handed him over saw any signs of mistreatment. On the 20-hr. journey to Washington on the FBI's G-5 jet, a U.S. official says, agents reported he looked...
...government official privately dismissed the three academics as an ex-communist, a radical Islamist and an extreme Arab nationalist. "What nonsense," said Ibrahim al-Mugaiteeb, spokesman for Human Rights First Saudi Arabia. "How extremist can they be if they're willing to work together? When these people submitted their petition, the Crown Prince said, 'Your project is my project.' But nothing happened. If the government really wants to say no to terrorism, it must say yes to greater democracy...