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Asharq al-Awsat
said Ahmed al-Mughassil, leader of the Hezbollah al-Hejaz who
had been indicted by a U.S. court for the attack that killed 19
U.S. service personnel and wounded almost 500 people, had been
captured in the Lebanese capital Beirut and transferred to
Riyadh.
Saudi authorities were not immediately available to comment.
Saudi Arabia and the United States have accused Iran of
orchestrating the truck-bomb attack. Iran has denied any
responsibility for the attack.
Asharq al-Awsat quoted official Saudi sources as saying Saudi
security personnel had received information about the presence
of 48-year-old Mughassil in Beirut.
"The discovery of Mughassil and his arrest in Lebanon and his
subsequent transfer to Saudi Arabia is a qualitative
achievement, for the man had been in disguise in a way that made
it hard to identify him," Asharq al-Awsat said, without
elaborating on when he was captured and who captured him.
In 2006, a U.S. federal judge ordered Iran to pay $254 million
to the families of 17 U.S. service personnel killed in the
attack in a judgment entered against the Iranian government, its
security ministry and the Revolutionary Guards after they failed
to respond to a lawsuit initiated more than four years earlier.
The 209-page ruling had found that the truck bomb involved in
the attack was assembled at a base in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley
operated by Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards, and the
attack was approved by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei.
(Reporting by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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