The inquiry into three anti-British car bombings in Saudi Arabia has yet to produce a real breakthrough, despite several arrests, the deputy interior minister admitted Saturday.
"We have not yet achieved results that we can consider useful," Prince Amhed bin Abdul Aziz told the Okaz newspaper.
He confirmed reports that one of the suspects, American citizen Michael Sedlak, knew Briton Christopher Roadway, who was killed in the first bombing on November 17 in Riyadh.
"He knew him personally, and they had differences about certain questions," the prince said. "Several reasons require him to be kept in custody," he added, referring to Sedlak.
Investigations had so far failed to show that the men were involved in illegal sales of alcohol, which is strictly banned in the Islamic kingdom.
The prince also denied claims by the exiled Saudi opposition that 38 Islamic fundamentalists had been arrested since the bombings.
"We do not have so-called fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia, and arrests of this scale have not taken place," he said.
According to the prince, British investigators who are in Saudi Arabia are not involved in the inquiry. "They have the right to be informed of certain results and to share with us the information they have, but they are not part of the inquiry," he stressed.
Rodway, 47, died and his wife, Jane, was slightly hurt by a car bomb in the center of the capital.
Coca-Cola employee David Brown, 32, from Scotland was badly hurt on December 15 in the eastern city of Khobar when a small box left on his car windscreen exploded as he tried to remove it.
And two Britons and an Irish woman were wounded in another car blast on November 22.
The British and US governments have urged their citizens in the kingdom to take precautions.
A Belgian and a Lebanese are among those arrested along with Sedlak as part of inquiries into the three car bombings, the Saudi-owned newspaper al-Hayat has reported -- RIYADH (AFP)
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