In a swift retaliation to the beheading of American engineer Paul M. Johnson Jr. by an al Qaeda cell, reports said Saudi security forces tracked down and killed the leader of the network in a shoot-out Friday.
The death of Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, the leader of al-Qaeda in the kingdom hours after Johnson's body was found later, was considered a big achievement for the Saudi government, which has been under intense pressure to halt the wave of attacks. In a video posted on the Internet Tuesday, a hooded al-Moqrin held an assault rifle and shouted demands for the release of al-Qaeda prisoners as Johnson sat blindfolded.
Saudi forces killed four other al-Qaeda fighters in Friday's shootout, which came after a witness reported the license plate number of a car from which they dumped Johnson's body and police then stopped the vehicle at a gas station, security officials said.
But they were too late to save Johnson, whose severed head was shown on a Web site Friday. The photographs and a statement, in the name of Fallujah Brigade of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, appeared after Johnson's wife went on Arab television and tearfully pleaded for his release.
Shortly after discovering Johnson's body some 30 kms north of the capital, Saudi police swooped down on the al-Malz neighborhood in central Riyadh and exchanged fire with al-Qaeda suspects.
Meanwhile, a message posted on an Islamic Web site Saturday denied al-Moqrin was killed. Johnson's body was found.
"Some satellite networks and news agencies have been propagating the false news that Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, God preserve him, has been killed," the statement said. "We would like to say that such claims, unleashed by the tyrants of Saudi Arabia, are aimed at dissuading the holy warriors and crushing their spirits."
However, Saudi officials in Washington told the AP that five Saudi security officers were killed in the gunbattle. Two suspects escaped, said one Saudi security official who took part in the raid.
A U.S. official confirmed that al-Moqrin, 31, was one of the dead. A Saudi official said forensic tests would be conducted on the body to confirm his identity.
Saudi security officials claimed al-Moqrin trained with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and later fought in Bosnia and Algeria. Al-Moqrin became the most-wanted man in Saudi Arabia. A senior Saudi official in Washington identified the other dead Friday as:
Turki al-Sahaid, said to have been involved in the May 29 shooting and hostage-taking attack on the oil hub of Khobar that killed 22 people, most of them foreigners;
Faisal Abdulrahman Abdullah al-Dakheel, on the government's list of 26 most-wanted men;
Rakan al-Sakhain, the second most-wanted man and an alleged associate of the mastermind of the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen's port of Aden in October 2000; (Albawaba.com)
© 2004 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
