Al-Qaida plot to assassinate Bush revealed

Washington - An alleged al-Qaida plot to assassinate George Bush was revealed yesterday when an American man who spent 20 months in a Saudi jail on suspicion of terrorism was charged with conspiring to kill the president.

According to the indictment, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 23, conspired with al-Qaida members in Saudi Arabia to carry out the assassination, either by getting "close enough to the president to shoot him on the street" or with a car bomb.

The U.S. attorney leading the prosecution, Paul McNulty, said Mr Abu Ali had "turned his back on America" and "now stands charged with some of the most serious offences our nation can bring against supporters of terrorism".

The indictment does not say what evidence the prosecution has against Mr Ali, other than the FBI's discovery of al-Qaida literature, gun magazines and general information about surveillance and counter-surveillance at his home in Falls Church, a Washington suburb.

The charges provoked laughter in the U.S. district court in Washington from over a hundred of Mr Abu Ali's supporters, and were later rejected by his father, Omar, who claimed they had been "cooked".

One of his lawyers, Ashraf Nubani, said he had been tortured while in Saudi prison. "He has the evidence on his back. He was whipped," Mr Nubani told the court, according to the Associated Press.

Mr Abu Ali, who was born in Texas and came top of his high school class in Virginia, was picked up by the Saudi authorities in Medina in June 2003, a month after a wave of al-Qaida bomb attacks against residential compounds for foreigners in Riyadh.

His family and supporters mounted a lawsuit last July de manding he be released or charged. They claimed his arrest had been initiated by the U.S. and that the U.S. was keeping him in Saudi Arabia "to avoid constitutional scrutiny by U.S. courts". The lawsuit triggered a court battle with the administration over its use of secret evidence against Mr Abu Ali.

Under legal pressure, the U.S. state department presented a formal request to the Saudi government in January to charge Mr Abu Ali, or allow him to be brought back to the U.S.. According to a legal source, his parents were told only on Monday that he was being flown back and would appear in court.

The charges against Mr Abu Ali included six counts of conspiracy and material support for al-Qaida. The indictment claims he met his unnamed co-conspirators when he travelled to Medina in 2000 for religious studies. He returned home in August that year but stayed in touch with one of those contacts before returning to Saudi Arabia in September 2002, where he met the contact again and announced "his interest in joining al-Qaida".

"It was defendant Abu Ali's intent to become a planner of terrorist operations like Mohamed Atta and Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, well known al-Qaida terrorists associated with the attacks on September 11 2001," the indictment said.

Between September 2002 and his arrest on June 9 2003, it was alleged, he discussed ways of assassinating Mr Bush with at least three other co-conspirators, including one who gave him a religious blessing for the assassination.

He is also said to have attempted to travel to Iran with the intention of slipping into Afghanistan to join the jihad against U.S.-led troops, but was denied a visa. -- Guardian News

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