Suspect in 1996 Khobar Towers bombing arrested

Saudi national Ahmed al-Maghsal, who’s been on the run for 19 years, was arrested in Beirut and handed over to Saudi authorities in the capital, Riyadh, the newspaper said, citing officials it didn’t identify. The truck bomb attack killed 19 U.S. service staff and wounded nearly 500 people.

Saudi paper Asharq Alawsat, which first reported the development, said he was arrested in Beirut and transferred to Riyadh.

Mughassil, also known as Abu Omran, directed terrorist attacks against American interests in Saudi Arabia, authorities said.

It says that on 25 June 1996 Hezbollah al-Hijaz members drove a tanker filled with plastic explosives into the auto park at the Khobar Towers housing complex near the eastern city of Dhahran and detonated it, all but destroying the nearest building. The blast demolished one side of the building, leaving a massive crater.

FBI Director James Comey was the assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia who handled the investigation of the Khobar Towers bombing.

Saudi Arabia and the United States have accused Iran of commanding the bombing, but Tehran has denied any involvement.

The U.S. Justice Department also declined to comment.

Details of al-Mughassil’s life remain elusive.

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 Revolutionary Guards after they failed to respond to a lawsuit initiated more than four years earlier.

A suspect from the 1996 Khobar (KOE-bar) Towers bombing has been caught. While the group no longer exists in the open and was dismantled after the Khobar attacks, it continues to be popular among some radical pockets of Shiites in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province.

Dilanian reported from Washington.