Saudi Tells of Deal to Arrest Terror Suspect

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan’s Taliban militia reached a secret deal to send Osama bin Laden to a Saudi prison last summer, nearly two months before deadly bombs devastated two American embassies and put the suspected terror mastermind on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list.

But the deal crumbled as the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed a year ago Saturday and was dead by the time U.S. forces retaliated two weeks later with missile attacks on camps linked to Bin Laden, according to the account of a top Saudi official who said he negotiated the secret pact.

In the year since the deal unraveled, Saudi Arabia’s bitter estrangement from its onetime friend, the Taliban, has compounded the Afghan regime’s isolation and complicated international efforts to apprehend the Saudi-born Bin Laden. American embassies remain on terrorist alert, and Bin Laden continues to make threats against the United States.

It is not clear whether swift surrender of Bin Laden to Saudi authorities in June 1998 would have prevented the Aug. 7 bombings that killed 224 people, but both U.S. and Saudi officials believe that he was the architect of those plots and had personal contact with the bombers just before the attacks.

Details of the previously undisclosed surrender agreement, and of the diplomatic fallout from its collapse, were obtained by The Times in a rare interview here with Prince Turki al Faisal, the chief of Saudi intelligence.

His account could not be independently verified. U.S. officials said they were not involved in the negotiations and did not learn about the secret talks until earlier this year.

The Taliban’s representative in New York, Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, while acknowledging that the issue has badly strained relations with Saudi Arabia, said there was never an agreement to turn over Bin Laden. Instead, he said, the Taliban’s understanding was that the Saudis wanted Bin Laden confined in Afghanistan.

According to Turki’s account, he led a small Saudi delegation to Taliban headquarters in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in June 1998. The prince said they sought either Bin Laden’s ouster from Afghan territory or his custody for trial in Saudi Arabia for advocating the government’s overthrow.

During their three-hour meeting, he said, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and his ruling council agreed to end the sanctuary Bin Laden has enjoyed in Afghanistan since 1996. But the surrender would have to be carefully orchestrated so that it “would not reflect badly on the Taliban” and would not appear to be “mistreating a friend,” according to Turki.

Saudi Pledge for Trial in Islamic Court

The key to that initial deal, Turki said, was a Saudi pledge that Bin Laden would be tried only in an Islamic court--a condition of surrender that would have precluded his extradition to face any U.S. prosecution.

A senior Clinton administration official familiar with international efforts to capture Bin Laden shrugged off any potential conflict between Riyadh and Washington over the extradition matter, saying: “We could live with that. . . . The important thing is for Bin Laden to be brought to justice somewhere.”

Final terms for the Bin Laden hand-over were being hammered out between Taliban and Saudi envoys, according to Turki, during the same period that authorities now believe the embassy attacks were being plotted. Those negotiations ended amid a flurry of recriminations in the aftermath of the bombings.

The embassy bombings were linked immediately to Bin Laden by Western authorities, with the apparent side effect of rallying support for Bin Laden within the Taliban. Subsequent retaliatory U.S. missile attacks on Bin Laden’s Afghan training camps only hardened that support.

A federal grand jury in New York has since indicted Bin Laden on murder and conspiracy charges for allegedly directing the embassy attacks. The indictment also links Bin Laden to deadly attacks on U.S. military personnel in Saudi Arabia and Somalia.

Earlier this year, Washington imposed trade and financial sanctions on the Taliban, accusing the ultraconservative Islamic group of protecting a terror network. The U.S. also has offered a $5-million reward for Bin Laden’s capture.

Riyadh’s Ties With Taliban Strained

Although the Saudi proposal to the Taliban still stands, there are few signs of a thaw between the former friends. Last month, a Taliban spokesman told the Arab-language daily Al Sharq al Awsat that Bin Laden will never be forced out of Afghanistan against his will. The spokesman specifically ruled out any future surrender deals with the U.S. or Saudi Arabia.

But Mujahid said last week that the Taliban is willing to turn the matter over to a committee of Islamic scholars from Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region who would act as arbitrators.

“If they agree he should be confined, we would abide by that decision; if they say he should be tried in a Saudi court, we are absolutely ready to give him to Saudi Arabia,” the Taliban representative said in a telephone interview Friday.

In June 1998, the white-robed Saudi delegation on its secret mission to Taliban headquarters had every reason to expect a friendly reception in Kandahar. The Saudi government generously supported Afghan resistance fighters in their long war to oust Soviet occupation forces.

Turki, the intelligence chief and son of a former Saudi king, was a familiar figure himself, having mediated civil strife between rival tribes and religious factions in Afghanistan after the war.

Most significantly, however, Saudi Arabia was one of only three countries--including Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates--to have recognized the Taliban government.

Turki said he and his small entourage were, in fact, greeted with a cordial embrace by Omar, the maimed Taliban leader who lost one eye to Soviet shrapnel. They sat down to tea with about a dozen members of the mullah’s ruling council.

The agenda was limited to a single item: Osama bin Laden.

The Saudis intended to prosecute Bin Laden for seditious conduct. The former Saudi businessman, stripped of his citizenship in 1994, had advocated overthrowing the Riyadh government and called its pro-U.S. policies anti-Islamic.

It is unclear whether such conduct would be regarded as an act of treason under Saudi law, thereby raising the risk of a death sentence--as do the federal murder and conspiracy charges pending in the U.S. The Saudi intelligence chief would say only that Bin Laden had committed “grave crimes.”

At the time of his mission to Kandahar, Turki said, a number of Taliban leaders considered Bin Laden an unwelcome burden. Bin Laden’s presence was seen by some, for example, as an obstacle to foreign investment. Certainly, he was a liability to the Taliban relationship with Riyadh, one of the regime’s few friends.

“We made it plain that if they want to have good relations with the kingdom [of Saudi Arabia], they have to get Bin Laden out of Afghanistan,” Turki recalled.

Like the U.S., the Saudi government regards Bin Laden as a threat to its national security. He objected to U.S. military forces’ use of Saudi territory during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and called for the Saudi government’s overthrow.

The 17th of 52 children born to a Saudi construction magnate and billionaire, Bin Laden in 1979 helped organize the “Afghan Arabs,” young Islamists recruited throughout the Middle East to fight Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan. He returned to Saudi Arabia a hero, but his support for Iraq during the Gulf War brought him into conflict with the Saudi government and royal family. He moved his four wives and family to Sudan, but his continued criticism cost him his Saudi citizenship.

In 1996, Sudan expelled Bin Laden under pressure from the Saudi government. He returned to Afghanistan, where his alleged support for terrorists prompted the CIA to call him the godfather of radical Islamists. From each base of exile, Bin Laden continued to attack the Saudi government.

“He claims the government is illegitimate. He claims that we subvert Islam. All these are the bases of criminal charges,” Turki said in the interview earlier this year.

Turki recalled that, after “very friendly” negotiations with Omar, the Taliban made a definitive promise to hand over Bin Laden.

“It was discussed and repeated many times during the meeting,” Turki said. And the subject was discussed at subsequent meetings when aides of both sides met to work out the politically sensitive mechanics of how the surrender would be orchestrated, he added.

Those meetings spanned the next two months. The Saudis were frustrated by the delays but did not suspect that their deal was in trouble until after the embassy bombings. Suddenly, according to the Saudis, Taliban officials said they had made no promise to give up Bin Laden. They blamed translator problems for a misunderstanding. The Saudis were outraged.

“They reneged,” Turki said. “They made a promise to get him out of Afghanistan. Then they broke that promise.”

Taliban representative Mujahid called the dispute unfortunate and insisted that the Taliban government “has no bad intentions against the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” He said the Taliban will always be grateful for Saudi support, especially in its holy war against Soviet forces.

But Taliban loyalty to Bin Laden also is strong. He personally financed and helped train and recruit Arab resistance fighters in the war to oust Soviet occupation forces. Perhaps most notably, however, according to Turki, Bin Laden also has developed “a very close relationship” with Omar.

Turki noted published reports in Middle Eastern and European newspapers that Bin Laden built a residence for the Taliban leader. And Turki cited unconfirmed intelligence that one of Bin Laden’s five daughters may be the latest of the mullah’s wives, which would make the fugitive Saudi the father-in-law of the Taliban chief.

Still, the Saudis were surprised by the Taliban’s abrupt turnaround. The bombings drastically altered the calculus of compromise by silencing internal critics of Bin Laden.

On Aug. 20, 1998, two weeks after the embassy blasts, swarms of U.S. cruise missiles slammed into remote camps in Afghanistan that Washington said were used by Bin Laden to train terrorists.

At that point, renewal of the Saudi-Taliban deal was hopeless. In mid-September, after an acrimonious meeting between Saudi and Taliban officials, Riyadh called home its envoy to Afghanistan and ordered the Taliban charge d’affaires to leave immediately.

The U.S. has since intensified pressure on the other two countries that, like Saudi Arabia, have recognized the Taliban government.

Last month, the administration dispatched senior officials to press authorities in the United Arab Emirates to halt financial dealings with Bin Laden. The New York Times reported that Bin Laden was using banks in Dubai to circumvent an international freeze on his assets. The U.S. also has held separate high-level meetings with Pakistani officials.

“Pakistan can do a lot more,” said a senior administration official.

But in New York last week, the Taliban’s representative insisted that Bin Laden is under instruction from Taliban authorities not to take actions harmful to Saudi Arabia, the United States or any other country.

“This person is not allowed to do anything against any country from Afghanistan,” Mujahid said.

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Times researcher Edith Stanley in Atlanta contributed to this report.