KUWAIT CITY - Kuwaiti security forces have arrested a suspected Islamist militant who had been sentenced in absentia on charges of affiliation to a group linked to Al-Qaeda and involved in clashes with police, newspapers reported on Tuesday. Hamad Nawaf al-Harbi, one of eight of the 37-member group who remained at large, was arrested Monday in Al-Farwaniya, five kilometers (three miles) south of Kuwait City, they quoted an interior ministry statement as saying.“The questioning of Harbi should lead to the arrest of the seven others” still on the run, the statement said.
Harbi was one of 10 members of the “Peninsula Lions Brigades” who were sentenced in absentia last December. He was handed a seven-year jail term and was considered the third most wanted fugitive in the case. Thirty-seven suspected militants were tried on charges of membership in the group, which was behind deadly gunfights with police in January 2005. Eight militants were killed in the clashes along with four police officers and two civilians.