| The mastermind of a shooting rampage which killed five Westerners in Saudi Arabia had fought alongside al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and was wanted by US authorities. Mustafa Abdul Kader Abed al-Ansari took part in battles in the Tora Bora mountains in 2002 before slipping out of Afghanistan into Pakistan and fleeing to Yemen, where he was arrested last year, the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat said. Quoting informed sources at its London base, the newspaper said Ansari, who led the group of four assailants in last week's attack in the industrial city of Yanbu, fought side by side with Saudi-born bin Laden and his Egyptian right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahiri. It did not say precisely when, but went on to quote Muslim extremist sources in London as saying Ansari was on the US wanted list "as of 2002, when he was fighting in Tora Bora or when he was in detention in Yemen". The extremist sources said Ansari's photograph appeared along with those of wanted Yemeni al-Qaeda militants on a US intelligence website. A reproduction of the relevant page in Asharq Al-Awsat showed Ansari's photo next to that of Fawaz Yahya al-Rabeei, a Yemeni national who the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned in February 2002 could be planning a strike in the United States or against US interests in Yemen. Rabeei was arrested in Yemen in April 2003. |