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Kuwaiti Suspects Deny Plotting To Blow Up Israeli Center In Qatar
KUWAIT CITY, Feb 10 (News Agencies) - Members of a suspected Kuwaiti activist ring denied Saturday they had plotted to blow up the Israeli commercial center in Qatar, charging that confessions were extracted from them by force.
The alleged leader of the ring, busted by Kuwaiti police in November, Mohammad Abdullah al-Dosari told the criminal court he was tortured and verbally insulted by the secret service during interrogation.
"For the last three and a half months, I have been kept in solitary confinement. They beat me up and insulted me to extract confessions," Dosari told the court panel, headed by judge Ali al-Dubaibi.
But he admitted that he had hidden about 85 kilos (187 pounds) of powerful explosives in the desert, saying it belonged to Sheikh Athbi al-Sabah, a member of the ruling family.
One of the suspects, Badi al-Ajmi, was arrested in Qatar during the Islamic summit in November, and was extradited to Kuwait. He is serving a one-year jail sentence for an unrelated case.
Sixteen Kuwaitis, including seven servicemen and two professors of Islamic studies at Kuwait University have been indicted on charges of belonging to an activist ring and plotting to blow up the commercial center in Qatar.
Three of the members are in jail and 12 are released on bail. The group's suspected mastermind, a Moroccan, had fled Kuwait, allegedly to Iran, using a fake Saudi passport.
The first arrests were made in November. Earlier reports had said they belonged to a group linked to Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden that was plotting attacks on U.S. targets in the Gulf.
The public prosecution has accused the main suspects of forming an outlawed group with the aim of carrying out attacks, citing a commercial center in Doha as an example.
Some of the defendants were only accused of assisting the key suspects.
The men were also charged with possession of a large hoard of unlicensed arms, including 133 kilograms (293 pounds) of powerful explosives, 1,450 detonators, several RPG rocket launchers, Kalashnikov assault rifles, hand grenades, hand guns and ammunition.
A number of the suspects told the court the arms were left behind by Iraqi troops in 1991.
One week before the arrests, U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were put on the highest security alert because of a "credible threat" of attacks against unspecified targets following the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen.
The court will meet again on March 24th to hear the defense.
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