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Thursday, Feb 24, 2005

International

International

Al-Qaeda plot to assassinate Bush?

By Julian Borger

WASHINGTON, FEB. 23. An alleged Al-Qaeda plot to assassinate the U.S. President, George Bush, was revealed yesterday when an American man who spent 20 months in a Saudi jail on suspicion of terrorism was charged with conspiring to kill him.

According to the indictment, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali (23), conspired with Al-Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia to carry out the assassination, either by getting ``close enough to the President to shoot him on the street'' or with a car bomb.

No word on evidence

The U.S. attorney leading the prosecution, Paul McNulty, said Mr. Abu Ali had ``turned his back on America'' and ``now stands charged with some of the most serious offences our nation can bring against supporters of terrorism.''

The indictment does not say what evidence the prosecution has against Mr. Ali, other than the FBI's discovery of Al-Qaeda literature, gun magazines and general information about surveillance and counter-surveillance at his home in Falls Church, a Washington suburb.

The charges provoked laughter in the U.S. district court in Washington from over a hundred of Mr. Abu Ali's supporters, and were later rejected by his father, Omar, who claimed they had been ``cooked.''

Mr. Abu Ali, who was born in Texas and came top of his high school class in Virginia, was picked up by the Saudi authorities in Medina in June 2003, a month after a wave of Al-Qaeda bomb attacks against residential compounds for foreigners in Riyadh. His family and supporters mounted a lawsuit last July demanding he be released or charged. They claimed his arrest had been initiated by the U.S. and that the U.S. was keeping him in Saudi Arabia ``to avoid constitutional scrutiny by U.S. courts.'' —

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