Al Qaeda Sunday, Aug. 30, identified the suicide bomber who slightly injured Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, son of the interior minister and nephew of King Abdullah, in Jeddah Thursday Aug. 27, as Abdullah Hassan Tali al-Asiri, known as Abul Khair. Islamist sites reported: "The hero martyr on the list of 85 wanted persons… managed to enter his palace, pass his guards and blow up a package."
The communiqué suggested Asiri was apparently flow to Jeddah from Najran on the prince's private jet after entering from Yemen, claiming he wanted to give himself up as a repentant terrorist.
One of the holes DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources find in the official Saudi account of the first known close-quarters attempt on a Saudi royal since the 9/11 attacks on the United States is the statement that no one else was hurt, although the would-be assassin blew himself up in a group of people in Prince Mohammed's bureau.
The al Qaeda account confirms DEBKAfile's report linking the attempted murder to Saudi Arabia's involvement in the civil war tearing Yemen apart.
Our military sources were the first to reveal on Aug. 22 that Saudi Air Force bombers were pounding rebel al-Houthi strongholds in northern Yemen and that the targeted Saudi prince is coordinating operations on behalf of the royal house with Washington, Cairo and the Yemeni army command and government in Sanaa.
If the al Qaeda statement is correct, it would suggest that Osama bin Laden's "Qaeda Jihad Organization in the Arab Peninsula" has been able to get a double agent close to the key Saudi coordinator of the Yemen war effort. This organization was formed by a merger between the Saudi and Yemeni branches of al Qaeda.
If Al Asiri could pass through security screening at Najran and Jeddah airports while armed after entering from Yemen and board the prince's private jet, then Prince Muhammad must have recognized him as someone he wanted to debrief on the state of the Yemen battlefield, i.e. a Saudi agent or informant whom he trusted.
The prince asked his bodyguards not to search al Asiri, little suspecting he had opened himself up to attack by an al Qaeda mole.
DEBKAfile's military sources add that the Yemeni army is faring badly against the al-Houthi rebels armed by Iran and backed by al Qaeda.
The troops have failed to break through to the rebel strongholds in the northern Sadaa province which borders on Saudi Arabia's Najran and Asir. Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh has finally decided to throw his elite presidential guard, the 29th Mechanized Division, into the fray in a desperate bid to tip the scales in his favor.
