Saudi Arabia has arrested the mastermind of the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers housing complex in which 19 U.S. service members were killed and 372 injured, a Saudi-owned newspaper said Wednesday.
Ahmed al-Mughassil was arrested in Beirut and handed over to Saudi custody, the pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat daily said. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the capture to the Associated Press.
The announcement of his arrest is a convenient reminder for opponents of President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran that Tehran has been a major supporter of terrorist attacks that have killed U.S. service members. One prominent national security expert called the timing of the arrest “suspicious.”
The June 25, 1996, attack has long been blamed on Iran, and a U.S. court in 2006 ordered Tehran to pay $254 million to the families of 17 of those who died. The Supreme Court is now considering whether nearly $2 billion in frozen assets belonging to Iran’s Central Bank can be used to pay the judgment.
Al-Mughassil, who was from Qatif, a majority-Shiite town in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern province, was military leader of the Iranian-backed Saudi Hezbollah. He was indicted in 2001 on charges stemming from the bombing and has been on the list of terrorists most wanted by U.S. authorities since then. It was unclear when he was arrested.
In a blog post, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel suggested that the timing is too convenient to be a coincidence.
“The news of al-Mughassil’s apprehension will also raise questions about how the 20-year-old manhunt broke now. The timing is suspicious. Is the news intended to remind Americans about Iran’s long history of involvement in terrorism, just as the congressional debate on the Iran nuclear deal reaches its peak?” wrote Riedel, who was a deputy assistant secretary of defense at the time of the bombing.
“Even if the timing of al-Mughassil’s arrest is a coincidence, the decision to leak the news is probably intended to influence the debate.”
U.S. lawmakers have until Sept. 17 to study the deal struck July 14 in Vienna to freeze Iran’s nuclear program. It’s likely that Congress will get the required votes to send a resolution of disapproval to President Obama, who said he would veto such a move.
