Saudis coerced bombing suspects to blame Iran, shield al Qaeda

Posted By Gareth Porter / IPS On June 26, 2009 @ 8:46 pm In

When a truck bomb exploded outside a housing unit in Saudi Arabia in 1996, killing 19 US service members, the Saudis quickly concluded that the plot had been carried out by Hezbollah with the backing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. FBI Director Louis Freeh was prepared to accept the confessions obtained by the Saudis as proof, but the Department of Justice suspected they had been obtained through torture.

Gareth Porter reports that by 2003, it had become apparent that the Saudis routinely tortured terror suspects and coached them into making confessions that would not implicate al Qaeda. By that time, however, Freeh had embarked on a new career as the chief defender of the Saudis’ response to the Khobar plot.

This is the final installment of a five-part series, “Khobar Towers Investigated: How a Saudi Deception Protected Osama bin Laden”. The work on this series was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.