Saudi "Terror Finance" Arrests: Still More Questions Than Answers (updated)

By Andrew Cochran

On Saturday I posted about the arrests of 10 people by the Saudi government, ostensibly for funding terrorism outside the Kingdom. Soon after the arrests, an attorney for some of the arrested cried foul, claiming the suspects are actually just dissidents, silenced for trying to exercise their basic human rights. "They are pure reformists par excellence. Nothing about them is remotely linked with terrorism." He named some of the men as Sulaiman Rushoudi, Essam Basrawy, Abdel-Rahman al-Shimary, Abdelaziz al-Khuraijy and Mousa al-Qarny. Days later, detailed information on the arrested suspects is still scant and lacking, and Amnesty International has now questioned the bases for arrests. "They are held incommunicado and are at risk of torture or other ill-treatment. Some of them had been detained before because of their work."

Contributing Experts Jonathan Winer and Dennis Lormel are quoted in a newswire story today on the questions surrounding the arrests and their significance if they are really for funding extraterritorial terror. Jonathan: "We just don't know enough. We don't know who these people are." Dennis: For the "Saudis to overtly take action that received media attention they were either pressured by the U.S. government or felt the need to generate positive publicity."

What is most telling about that story and the arrests, to me, is the lack of any statement by any U.S. senior official, off or on the record, since the arrests. If these are really terror-related arrests, it is in the Saudis' interests to privately share information about the subjects with other countries which can use the information in their counter-terrorism operations, and which also enables U.S. officials to publicly congratulate the Saudis. The silence from Washington is deafening and leads me to think, so far, that the arrests had no nexus to real terrorism.

UPDATE: There will be a closed-door hearing on Saudi Arabia which will be held this Thursday at the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Interesting coincidence. And Jean-Charles Brisard has additional background information on some of the subjects, with one having been designated in 2004 for ties to bin Laden. Brisard reports that two others have past links, dating back to the early 1990s, to Osama bin Laden, and they also worked with reformers. Brisard questions the timing of the arrests. His article includes additional links to important information about these subjects.

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