Posted on 07/04/2003 8:35:18 AM PDT by Prodigal Son
A young Canadian al-Qaeda suspect was shot dead in a gunfight in Saudi Arabia yesterday, his long journey into jihad ending in a hail of bullets alongside the most-wanted Saudi militant. Just a few years ago, Abdul-Rahman Mansour Jabarah, 23, attended a Roman Catholic high school in the quiet Southern Ontario town of St. Catharines. Yet he grew up to be an Islamic warrior and yesterday he and fellow fighters refused to give themselves up, firing bullets and lobbing grenades at Saudi police.
The confrontation happened at the house of a Muslim prayer leader in the town of Swair, where suspects wanted in connection with the May 12 suicide bombing in Riyadh were hiding, according to a Saudi Interior Ministry official.
Mr. Jabarah was named among the dead. For the past six weeks he had been hunted by Saudi authorities who posted a $100,000 (U.S.) reward for information leading to his capture.
The official statement described Mr. Jabarah as a Kuwaiti of Iraqi descent but failed to mention the Canadian citizenship he acquired after emigrating to Canada from Kuwait in 1994 while he was still a teenager. It is thought that his Canadian status made him a valued al-Qaeda recruit.
In early May, Saudi authorities issued a statement saying that Mr. Jabarah and 18 other terrorist suspects had eluded them after a similar gunfight. A cache of 55 hand bombs, 377 kilograms of explosives, seven machine guns and other weapons was found afterward, authorities said.
A week after the 19 suspects had fled from investigators, a co-ordinated truck bombing on compounds housing foreigners in Riyadh killed 35 people, in what Saudis said was an al-Qaeda attack. Mr. Jabarah emerged as a suspect given that global intelligence agencies believe he and his brother are well-trained al-Qaeda operatives whose Canadian passports were valued by the terrorist organization's leaders. His younger brother, Mohamed Mansour Jabarah, is in U.S. custody, having confessed to plotting bombings in Southeast Asia.
When contacted last night, officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service were surprised to hear of Mr. Jabarah's apparent death. Both agencies had been tracking his movements and will be attempting to determine more today.
Mr. Jabarah's mother expressed disbelief and sadness last night when contacted in her St. Catharines home. "I didn't hear anything," she said, acknowledging she is his mother but refusing to give her name. ". . . They killed four boys? They were shot while fighting?"
She was skeptical of the report. "Always we hear about news like this and later it's not right," she said, adding that she didn't believe her son was in Saudi Arabia. She said she thinks someone has stolen her son's identity.
In an interview from Singapore, a top al-Qaeda expert said that the Saudis wouldn't make any such mistake about the identity of Mr. Jabarah. The killing "demonstrates that Abdul-Rahman Jabarah was an important figure in the Saudi operation," said Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qaeda.
According to the Saudi account of the five-hour shootout in Swair, 900 kilometres northwest of the capital, Riyadh, police used loudspeakers to ask the wanted men to surrender. The cleric and his family emerged along with one suspect. The others opened fire with machine guns and grenades, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. "Security men returned the fire resulting in killing four terrorists."
The dead included Turki Nasser al-Dandani, who became the most wanted man in Saudi Arabia after the suspected mastermind of the Riyadh attacks surrendered last week. Mr. al-Dandani is thought to be the leader of the original 19 suspects.
Several others were arrested at the cleric's house on suspicion of trying to help the wanted men leave Saudi Arabia.
Saudis kill ex-Ontario terrorist
WASHINGTON—A former Ontario resident, one of the most wanted Al Qaeda operatives in Saudi Arabia, was killed early yesterday along with three other fugitives during a gun battle with Saudi police.
Abdoul Rahman Mansour Jabarah, a 23-year-old Kuwaiti who was raised in St. Catharines, is believed to have played a key role in the May 12 suicide bombings in Riyadh. He was also one of 19 men on the run after a shootout on May 6 with Saudi security forces in Riyadh.
Jabarah and Turki Nasser Mishaal Dandani, a Saudi citizen identified by authorities as a key planner of the May 12 attacks, died in the clash with police who stormed the home of a cleric who had hidden them.
Dandani detonated a hand grenade as police closed in on him in the town of Swair, about 900 kilometres north of Riyadh near the border with Jordan, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.
U.S. officials described both men as leaders of Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia; Jabarah also had direct links to former Al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who until his March 1 arrest in Pakistan was leading the terror group's efforts to re-establish its global network of cells.
Jabarah is also the older brother of Mohamed Mansour Jabarah, who U.S. and Canadian authorities say was recruited by Al Qaeda leaders to blow up American targets in Southeast Asia.
Both brothers lived in St. Catharines in the early 1990s; the younger Jabarah was a student at a Catholic school before going abroad, allegedly to join Al Qaeda. Mohamed, 21, was arrested in Oman last year and is being held in New York.
Sources told the Star's Michelle Shephard in May Mohamed was co-operating with authorities.
Both brothers were trained in guerrilla tactics at the Sheik Shaheed Abu Yahya training camp in Afghanistan, according to Western intelligence sources.
The confrontation occurred just after 5 a.m., when Saudi security forces surrounded the house where Dandani, Jabarah and several other wanted men.
One suspect, identified as Hassan Hadi Dossari, a Saudi national, gave himself up.
But Dandani and the others opened fire and lobbed grenades at the officers, according to the Saudi Interior Ministry.
In the ensuing gun battle, Dandani, Jabarah, Saudi national Amash Subaibie and Rajih Hassan Ajmi, a Kuwaiti, were killed, according to Nail Al Jubeir, a spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington.
Saudi authorities later arrested three men they described as accomplices attempting to smuggle Dandani and Jabarah out of the country. Al Jubeir identified them as two Saudis, Mohammed Sulaiman Sagaabi and Nasser Ruwaili, and a Syrian, Mohammed Badr Hazbar.
The U.S. official said Dandani played a "senior management'' role in the co-ordinated attacks, which killed 34, including nine terrorists, on May 12.
U.S. and Saudi authorities said yesterday they did not know whether Dandani, 29, personally participated in the May 12 attacks, but said that he helped plan and finance them.
Saudi officials also described Dandani as "the No. 1 figure on the wanted list" of 19 suspected Al Qaeda sought following the discovery of a large arms cache in Riyadh on May 6.
I suppose he can have the title of "warrior," as long as the modifier precededs it- that way everyone can know what he really was.
Excuse me... WAS.
"You infidel hosers!"
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