'Libyan Plot' To Kill Abdullah.

There were reports in the US media on June 10-11, 2004, about a failed Libyan plot to assassinate Prince Abdullah. In an article by Patrick E. Tyler of the NYT published on June 11, the lead paragraph said that, while the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar Al-Qadhafi, was "renouncing terrorism and negotiating the lifting of sanctions last year, his intelligence chiefs ordered a covert operation to assassinate the ruler of Saudi Arabia and destabilize the oil-rich kingdom. Tyler based is article on "statements by two participants in the alleged conspiracy": The Saudi-born businessman Abdel Rahman Al Amoudi, now an American Wahhabi leader in jail in Virginia, and Col. Mohammed Ismael, a Libyan intelligence officer in Saudi custody. Tyler said they had given "separate statements to US and Saudi officials outlining the plot".

Al Amoudis are a prominent and numerous Saudi clan of business tycoons and Islamic activists. Most business tycoons of this clan have been promoted and enriched for many years by Prince Sultan, the powerful second PM and defence minister. One of the Amoudis owns a group of petroleum companies which in the 1990s acquired a Swedish oil firm and expanded it to include oil refining and retail businesses in Morocco and other parts of the Arab world. This group has been secretive for years, as in the case of the Bin Laden group of businesses.

The relationship between the clan and Abdel Rahman Al Amoudi is not yet clear. According to Tyler, he had told FBI officials and federal prosecutors that Qadhafi had approved the assassination plan. But Tyler reported Qaddhfi's favourite son, Saif Al-Islam Qadhafi, as having said in an interview in London that the accusation was "nonsense". Tyler reported US officials as having confirmed that Al Amoudi and Ismael had offered detailed accounts of a Libyan plot to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah and that the accounts appeared to be "credible enough to have launched a US investigation". Tyler added: "But the officials said they were still examining the scope of the plot, how far it advanced and whether Colonel Qaddafi was involved. They said the accusations were one reason the United States had not removed Libya from the State Department list of nations that support terrorism. On June 9, a senior administration official said: 'We are fully aware of Libya's significant past involvement with terrorism... Qaddafi has pledged to end Libya's ties with terrorism and cooperate with the United States and our allies in the war on terrorism. We continue to monitor closely Libya's adherence to this pledge'".

Tyler noted that, as a revolutionary who overthrew the Libyan monarchy in 1969, Qadhafi had "long regarded the Saudi royal family with a degree of contempt". Tyler said the feeling "was often mutual as the Libyan leader charted an erratic course in the Middle East". In recent years, however, "Saudi and British diplomats had worked behind the scenes to help Libya negotiate an end to sanctions resulting from the Libyan terrorist operation that downed Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988".

According to Tyler, Al Amoudi's statements were offered "in plea negotiations with federal prosecutors that are not yet completed". He was indicted last October in the US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, on charges of violating US sanctions by travelling to Libya and "receiving money from Libyan officials". Tyler said the "statements of the two conspirators were described by three people with extensive official knowledge of the case who insisted that they not be identified because information about it remains classified in intelligence and law enforcement channels", adding: "Senior officials in the US, British and Saudi governments have been aware of the investigation of the alleged plot for several months".

Qadhafi and Prince Abdullah clashed at the Arab summit meeting that immediately preceded the US-led war in Iraq in March 2003. The two leaders exchanged insults in open session, accusing each other of selling out to colonial powers. An indignant Abdullah glared at Qadhafi and said: "Your lies precede you and your grave is in front of you".

Tyler said a Libyan terrorist plot, if verified by US, UK and Saudi governments "who are working in close coordination to investigate it", would undermine Qadhafi's public pledges that his government had abandoned terrorism. "It could also trigger a reinstatement of international sanctions on Libya that were lifted by the UN Security Council last September" after Qadhafi's regime renounced terrorism, admitted responsibility for the Pan Am 103 bombing and agreed to pay $2.7 bn compensation to the families of the victims.

Tyler reported a "senior Bush administration official" as saying "the emergence of convincing evidence that Qaddafi had ordered or condoned an assassination and terror campaign could cause a full '180 degree' change of US policy toward Libya". Tyler also reported "a diplomat" as noting that President George W. Bush had "conveyed to the Saudi royal family that he is going to find out what happened in the alleged conspiracy".

Tyler said Al Amoudi had told prosecutors that he twice met with Qadhafi, in June and August 2003, to discuss details of the assassination plan, "according to people with official access to his statements". The NYT reporter added: "In June (2003), Alamoudi said, Qaddafi told him, 'I want the crown prince killed, either through assassination or through a coup'. By August, according to Alamoudi's account, Qaddafi asked why he had not yet seen 'heads flying' in the Saudi royal family. Alamoudi's account is critical for federal prosecutors because it ties the terrorist plot that has been said to exist to a head of state. For that reason, Alamoudi has been questioned in great detail about his two reported meetings with Qaddafi, including descriptions of the Libyan leader's farm in Sidra, where they reportedly met in June, and of Qaddafi's office in Tripoli, where they reportedly met in August. Alamoudi, a naturalized US citizen living in Falls Church, Virginia, has been a longtime spokesman for Muslim views in America as founder of the American Muslim Council. The State Department paid him as a consultant to travel overseas and advocate tolerance and reconciliation among Jews, Christians and Muslims, but he was thereafter accused of making statements in support of terrorism". According to APS sources, Al Amoudi has been a radical Wahhabi militant