Hezbollah

by Levitt, Matthew

  Al-Mughassil’s heightened concern for operational security was well warranted. Reporting in the days right after the attack, the CIA would note that following the March arrests the Saudis quickly determined that al-Mughassil directed the explosives smuggling operation based on information obtained from the interrogation of the detained Hezbollah operatives. At first the Saudis thought he had fled to Iran, given their information showing he held Lebanese and possibly Iranian passports. Subsequent information, however, suggested he was in Syria and Lebanon. “Riyadh,” the CIA noted, “has been seeking Syrian assistance in extraditing Mughassil from Lebanon since at least April for questioning about the shipment of explosives to the kingdom.”101 These efforts to secure Syrian counterterrorism cooperation failed, as they would again when redoubled after the Khobar Towers bombing.

  Meanwhile, the plot continued apace. Using stolen identification, the cell purchased a tanker truck from a Saudi car dealership for about 75,000 Saudi Riyals, or some $20,000. The cell then spent two weeks leading up to the attack converting the tanker into a massive truck bomb at a farm in the Qatif area. Al-Mughassil was part of the team at the farm, along with al-Houri, al-Sayegh, al-Qassab, and the Lebanese Hezbollah operative, John Doe. Al-Mughis and al-Jarash came and went, with al-Mughis retrieving the timing device he was given and the explosives he helped hide and al-Jarash supplying the tools and wiring for the truck bomb assembly. The explosives were concealed within the gasoline tanker truck such that they would be unseen even if the truck were stopped and inspected. Had someone opened the hatch atop the tanker, he would have seen what appeared to be a tanker full of gasoline. In fact, John Doe and his crew had secured a fifty-gallon drum to the inside of the full 20,000-gallon tanker. But beneath the gasoline-filled drum, the rest of the tanker was filled with at least 5,000 pounds of plastic explosives. Mughassil’s ambitions did not end there: as he and his operatives built the truck bomb for the Khobar attack, al-Mughassil discussed plans for an additional attack, this one targeting the US consulate in Dhahran.102

  With the operational details attended to, several of the conspirators met at the Sayyeda Zeinab shrine in Damascus. The purpose of the meeting, held sometime around June 7–17, was to confer with the senior leadership of Saudi Hezbollah, including the group’s leader, Abdel Karim al-Nasser, and al-Mughassil, the group’s military chief. Also present were al-Houri, al-Yacoub, al-Sayegh, al-Qassab, and other senior Saudi Hezbollah leaders. Al-Nasser, the boss, presided over the meeting, reviewing details of the bombing plot and making clear to all that al-Mughassil was running the operation.103 According to Bruce Tefft, a former CIA official, other operational meetings also occurred in Damascus, including some at the Iranian embassy there. The Iranian mastermind of the Khobar plot, IRGC brigadier general Ahmed Sharifi, oversaw much of the operation out of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, according to Tefft. Within months of the attack, new intelligence reports revealed the role of “an Iranian intelligence officer who goes by various code names, including ‘Sherifi’ and ‘Abu Jalal,’ [who] acted as a liaison between Teheran and Saudi Shiites in Lebanon.”104 According to Tefft, “By the time [the plot] advanced far enough to the stage where they were actually recruiting individuals to participate in the attack, and passing out false passports and funds, those in the meetings with the conspirators, the people who executed the attack, took place out of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria.”105

  The case of Jaafar Chueikhat, a Saudi citizen and bombing suspect thought to be hiding in Syria after the attack, was a particular sticking point. Saudi officials long suspected Chueikhat of involvement in the transport of the explosives used in the Khobar bombing from the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in Lebanon to Saudi Arabia. Saudi authorities tracked Chueikhat from Kuwait to Egypt to Syria after the bombing, and asked the Syrians to arrest him. Chueikhat, the Syrians insisted, had already fled to Iran. The Syrians later arrested him, after he supposedly returned to Syria from Iran. But Chueikhat committed suicide while in a Syrian prison, according to Syrian officials. Chueikhat’s death occurred under mysterious circumstances, however, just a day before Saudi investigators were scheduled to question him for the first time.106 When US officials pressed the Syrian foreign minister, Farouk Sharaa, to look into the matter of Chueikhat’s death, Sharaa lost his temper and insisted Syria was not involved in the attack in Dhahran or any other acts of terrorism. In a terse comment to the press, a senior US administration official said, “We are not satisfied with what we learned and continue to press the case.”107

  Hani al-Sayegh spent significant time in Syria in the years leading up to the bombing, and would later insist to Canadian investigators and reporters that he could not have been involved in the bombing because he lived in Syria the two years before coming to Canada in August 1996. Stamps in his passport, he maintained, revealed he was in Syria, not Saudi Arabia, at the time of the bombing.108 Investigators were unconvinced, however, given that Iran provided cell members with false passports. Confessions from his co-conspirators and intercepted telephone conversations convinced Canadian, American, and Saudi officials that al-Sayegh played a key role in the bombing and had maintained contact with Iranian officials—both in Iran and Canada—since the attack. For example, while in Canada, al-Sayegh talked with his wife in Saudi Arabia and, speaking in Farsi, with Iranian officials in Iran. “In these conversations he makes oblique references that suggest a possible involvement in the Dhahran bombing, and he intimates that some of his cohorts fled at one time to Iran.”109

  Whether the Syrian government played some role in the attack, such as knowingly providing safe haven to Saudi Hezbollah operatives before and after the attack, remains an open question. For example, in the months after the attack, reports emerged that Saudi Hezbollah official Husayn bin Mubarak was holding court in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, which was firmly under Syrian control, publicly receiving Saudi Hezbollah members who escaped Saudi Arabia and made their way to Lebanon via Iran.110 What is known is that a week after the go-ahead meeting in Damascus, al-Mughassil and the members of his cell had returned to Saudi Arabia and were ready to execute the attack. On the evening of attack they met at the farm in Qatif, about five miles from Khobar Towers, to review final preparations. Present at this meeting were only the members of the actual operational unit, including al-Mughassil, al-Houri, al-Sayegh, al-Qassab, al-Jarash, and al-Mughis. They waited at the farm, the truck bomb ready to go, until dark.

  Hani al-Sayegh left the farm first, shortly before 10 PM. Driving a Datsun, with al-Jarash in the passenger seat, al-Sayegh pulled into the parking lot adjoining Building 131 at Khobar Towers and parked in the far corner. Serving as scouts, al-Sayegh and al-Jarash scanned the area for patrols or anything else that might disrupt their attack. Having conducted extensive surveillance of the site, they likely expected no such interruptions. The use of a scout vehicle, for its part, indicated the professional training the perpetrators received leading up to the attack. A white Chevrolet Caprice sedan entered the lot next. Al-Mughis had borrowed this car from an acquaintance, who likely had no idea his car would serve as the getaway for the perpetrators of a massive terrorist bombing. On their signal, the truck bomb entered, driven by al-Mughassil himself with al-Houri in the passenger seat. They backed up the truck to the fence in front of Building 131, then jumped into the back seat of the waiting getaway car, which drove away, followed by the lookouts in the signal car. Within minutes, the bomb exploded.111

  For reasons unknown, al-Jarash and al-Mughis returned home to Qatif. The remaining members of the cell, however, immediately left the Khobar area and made their ways out of Saudi Arabia, traveling on a variety of false passports. Most of the perpetrators are believed to have traveled to Iran. Al-Qassab went to Syria. Al-Sayegh, however, took a circuitous route to Canada, traveling from Kuwait to Rome to Boston to Ottawa. The complicated itinerary may have reflected the operational security he and his co-conspirators were trained to employ to evade detection. Or it may simply have been, as al-
Sayegh later claimed, that he found a cheap ticket on Alitalia Airlines that took this route.112

  The Investigation

  In the first days after the bombing, the US government had little hard information on the perpetrators. A July 1996 CIA analysis explained that “the Saudi investigation apparently is focusing on a group led by a Saudi Shia resident in Lebanon, but some reports point to Saudi Sunni militants or Iran as credible culprits.” Further hedging its bets, the CIA report included a text box noting that the Khobar attack occurred on the third anniversary of the US attack on the Iraqi Intelligence Service Headquarters and noted Iraq could not be ruled out as a suspect.113

  The Iraqi connection would quickly be dismissed, but the theory that the attack was carried out by radical Sunni “Afghan Arabs”—veterans of the jihad in Afghanistan inspired by bin Laden, like the accused and beheaded perpetrators of the OPM-SANG bombing—persisted for some time. In the weeks following the bombing, Saudi authorities arrested scores of suspects, Shi’a and Sunni alike. The Saudis claimed to have evidence linking some of the detained suspects to OPM-SANG suspects. “Our mistake,” one Saudi official quipped, “was to think that the first bombing was an isolated case.”114 Early reports suggested six “former Afghan-trained fighters” confessed to the bombing, possibly after being tortured. This focus on radical Sunnis should not surprise, given the recentness of the OPM-SANG bombing and Osama bin Laden’s 1996 fatwa calling for war against the United States and its allies. According to Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi who interviewed bin Laden, in the course of their discussions the al-Qaeda chief claimed responsibility for the Khobar bombing.115 Subsequent findings suggest this claim to have been bravado. But authorities have still not ruled out some kind of peripheral role by radical Sunni elements tied to al-Qaeda.

  As a result of their meetings in the early 1990s, Iran and al-Qaeda reached an informal agreement to cooperate, with Iran providing critical explosives, intelligence, and security training to bin Laden’s organization. In addition to providing training, the 9/11 Commission report points to operational cooperation in planning and executing attacks. Referring, for example, to the Khobar Towers bombing, the 9/11 Commission report concludes, “The operation was carried out principally, perhaps exclusively, by Saudi Hezbollah, an organization that had received support from the government of Iran. While evidence of Iranian involvement is strong, there are also signs that al Qaeda played some role, as yet unknown.”116

  As the investigation proceeded, Iran’s role in orchestrating the bombing would become crystal clear. Ultimately, FBI director Louis Freeh would testify that “the attack was planned, funded and sponsored by senior leadership in the government of the Republic of Iran; that the IRGC principally had the responsibility of putting that plan into operation; and it was [implemented] with the use of the Saudi Hezbollah organization and its members.”117

  Within hours of the attack, FBI agents and forensic specialists were en route to Saudi Arabia to assist in the investigation. FBI agents conducted what FBI counterterrorism chief Dale Watson described as a soup-to-nuts crime scene investigation, measuring the crater and searching for bomb components and other physical evidence.118 The FBI then helped track the vehicle identification number found on a piece of the chassis of the truck bomb. Armed with this information, Saudi authorities quickly identified the company that sold the truck and the Saudi Hezbollah facilitator who purchased it. Analyzing the explosives used in the Khobar blast and comparing those with the explosives seized at the Jordanian border back in March, the FBI laboratory determined they were from similar batches of C4 military-grade plastic explosive. Saudi authorities then went back to the cell members detained at the border in the months before the bombing. These fresh interrogations yielded still more information about the plot.119

  Meanwhile, six of the Saudi Hezbollah bombers were among the many people rounded up by Saudi authorities after the attack. Even as FBI investigators were sifting through the rubble at the bomb site, Saudi intelligence obtained the first confessions from the bombers. According to Louis Freeh, “the bombers admitted they had been trained by the Iranian external security service (IRGC) in the Bekka Valley, and received their passports at the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, along with $250,000 cash for the operation from IRGC Gen. Ahmad Sharifi.”120

  The FBI was keen to compile sufficient evidence to indict the bombers in US court for the deaths of nineteen US soldiers, but was frustrated in its early attempts to gain direct access to the suspects in Saudi custody. Then, in March 1997, the arrest of al-Sayegh in Canada provided the Bureau with its first big break. Canadian intelligence and law enforcement authorities had been watching al-Sayegh based on a tip from the Saudis. Although they preferred to keep him under surveillance to build a stronger case against him and learn more about the activities of Saudi Hezbollah and Iran, they received information indicating he was preparing to leave the country. On March 18, Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested him at the Queen Mary convenience store in Ottawa on joint orders of the minister of citizenship and immigration and the solicitor general, on the grounds that he posed “a security risk to Canada.”121 In May, al-Sayegh met with American officials and, after first claiming ignorance about the Khobar bombing, he soon confessed to having once belonged to the Saudi Hezbollah cell that carried out the bombing. Al-Sayegh informed officials that he was recruited by the IRGC and had participated not only in the Khobar bombing but also in another unspecified operation directed by Gen. Ahmad Sharifi.122

  Al-Sayegh agreed to assist US officials investigating the bombing as part of a plea bargain. But once he arrived in the United States, he reneged on his agreement and sought political asylum in America. That effort failed, and in October 1999, al-Sayegh was deported to Saudi Arabia. Concerned that Hezbollah might retaliate against US interests for deporting al-Sayegh to Saudi Arabia, the State Department issued a worldwide warning advising US citizens “to take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness to lessen their vulnerability.” The potential existed, US officials maintained, that “someone might try to take retaliatory action” for returning al-Sayegh to Saudi custody.123

  In July, two months after al-Sayegh was arrested in Canada, the Syrian government turned Mustafa al-Qassab over to Saudi authorities.124 Referring to al-Qassab, Freeh would later note that a detained suspect—one “who had been returned to Saudi Arabia from another country”—provided “key information which would later implicate senior Iranian government officials as responsible for the planning, funding and execution of this attack.”125 Soon after Mohammed Khatami was elected president of Iran in May 1997, Saudi crown prince Abdullah raised the issue of the Khobar bombing with outgoing president Rafsanjani at a meeting in Pakistan. According to one account, Abdullah told Rafsanjani, “We know you did it.” Rafsanjani reportedly replied that he was not personally involved but that if any senior Iranian official was involved “it was he”—and he pointed upward in an understood reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.126 Rafsanjani’s protestations of personal ignorance, however, contradict CIA reporting, which noted as early as 1990 that “the terrorist attacks carried out by Iran during the past year were probably approved in advance by President Rafsanjani and other senior leaders.”127

  Ultimately, a deal was brokered that granted FBI agents indirect access to the suspects, but only in 1998. The agents could submit questions that Saudi officials would pose to the suspects while the agents observed the interview behind a one-way mirror. On November 9, 1998, FBI agents asked eight suspects a series of 212 questions posed by Saudi agents at a Riyadh detention center. The Saudis also provided the transcripts of interviews with other detainees and other physical evidence they had collected. The net result, according to Freeh, amounted to “a devastating indictment.”128

  Yet the information collected remained insufficient for senior US officials. With the statute of limitations nearing for any prospective indictment, the FBI pressed again for d
irect access to the suspects detained in Saudi Arabia. Finally, in 2000 the FBI got to talk directly with the detainees, including the eight suspects they had questioned indirectly through a one-way mirror two years earlier and others, among them al-Qassab. Each of their statements corroborated other evidence that had been collected, as well as one another’s statements. They provided detailed descriptions of the plot, including training, preparing the explosives, carrying money, hiding explosives, and the roles played by Iranian officials.129 For Freeh, the details al-Qassab provided about Iran’s role in the attack “tied the whole package together for good.”130

  In June 2001, with the statute of limitations about to expire, the Department of Justice indicted thirteen members of the Saudi Hezbollah cell, including the unidentified Lebanese Hezbollah operative referred to as John Doe, in US federal court. To date, none of these fugitives have been captured, though several are believed to be living in Iran, including al-Nasser, al-Mughassil, and others. According to a 2009 Amnesty International report, Hani al-Sayegh and eight other accused co-conspirators were jailed in al-Dammam Prison, reportedly held without trial.131 In 2002, Saudi officials announced that some of the people involved in the Khobar Towers bombing had been tried and sentenced under Islamic law, but the officials would not specify who, or how many, or what the sentences were. The verdicts, a senior Saudi prince told the press, “must be announced at the right time.”132 That time has apparently yet to come.