Dinner Guest of bin Laden Identified as Saudi Fighter
By DOUGLAS JEHL
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 15 - The Saudi who was seen visiting Osama bin Laden in the videotape released this week is a 38-year-old veteran of conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya who left the kingdom most recently on Sept. 21, a senior Saudi official said today.
The official's account was the most authoritative yet in resolving the mystery surrounding the dinner guest, who was seen and heard on the tape paying effusive tribute to Mr. bin Laden and flattering him with news of Saudi clerics who he said had endorsed the Sept. 11 attacks in their sermons, fatwas and other messages.
The official identified the dinner guest as Khaled al-Harbi, a legless former fighter in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya who was not regarded as a religious scholar, and he said earlier accounts by Saudi and American officials naming him as Ali Sayeed al-Ghamdy, a religious scholar, were incorrect.
Unlike Mr. Ghamdy, who had been banned from preaching by the government in 1994, Mr. Harbi has never been arrested by the Saudi government or included on any kind of security watch list, the Saudi official said.
The official said Saudi Arabia did not know anything about Mr. Harbi's whereabouts between his departure from the kingdom 10 days after the Sept. 11 attacks and his appearance on the videotape, which was released in Washington on Thursday....
...In offering his account of what was known about the Saudi visitor, the senior Saudi official said he had been among the estimated 15,000 or more volunteers from the kingdom who had taken part in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980's, in what Saudi scholars advocated as a holy war against infidel occupiers....
The Saudi official said that little information was known about Mr. Harbi's service in Bosnia and Chechnya, but that it took place during the early to mid-1990's, and that the Saudi volunteer had lost his legs in one of the conflicts. In the videotape, the Saudi visitor appeared to have been disabled from the waist down; Mr. bin Laden was seen bending down to greet the visitor as he sat on the floor, most of his body obscured by loose robes....
<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/16/international/asia/16SHEI.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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