A suspected al-Qaeda commander has spoken in gruesome detail about how a British oil executive’s body was dragged through the streets following an attack on foreigners in Saudi Arabia.
Fawwaz bin Muhammad Al-Nashami claims to have been in charge of the operation which led to the deaths of 22 people two weeks ago in the eastern coastal city of al-Khobar. He later escaped.
His account was given to Sawt Al-Jihad (Voice of Jihad), a magazine sympathetic to al-Qaeda, and has been posted in Arabic on the internet.
Gunmen from the al-Quds Brigade, a branch of al-Qaeda on the Arabian peninsula, attacked a number of foreigners on the streets of al-Khobar before laying siege to the Oasis compound killing another nine foreigners.
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Their first victim was Michael Hamilton, a Scottish-born senior manager of Apicorp, the Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation.
Al-Nashami recounts that he and three other gunmen set out in the early hours of Saturday, May 29, to target Mr Hamilton’s company.
They broke through the gate of the company’s compound and shot Mr Hamilton dead at the wheel of his car.
“As soon as we entered, we encountered the car of a Briton, the investment director of the company, who Allah had sent to his death,” al-Nashami said.
“He is the one whose mobile phone is on the seat of the car ... they kept showing it [on television]. We left him in the street.”
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They then targeted the offices of Aramco, another oil company, where they shot dead an American and killed a South African.
After exchanging fire with Saudi forces, they stormed the Oasis compound in Khobar where, al-Nashami recounts, they rounded up Filipino Christians and Hindu engineers and killed them all, separating Muslims from non-Muslims.
Al-Nashami then tells how they made their escape, jumping 40 foot from the top of an artificial waterfall onto soft ground before the compound was stormed by Saudi special forces.
The account claims the militants then watched the television coverage of the Saudi special forces attacking the hotel hours after they had left.
“It was almost 11:30 at night, the security forces thought we were still in the hotel.
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“We hid outside the complex and at dawn we moved out from the hideout,” he said. “We seized a Saudi national guard car and after exchanging fire with the security forces, our brother Nimer was killed while the three of us managed to escape.”
Al-Nashami claims that they made their way through six different patrols before reaching the highway where they made their final escape.
He described the massacre of al-Khobar as a “great victory for Allah”.
If authenticated, al-Nashami’s statement would appear to contradict suggestions that a covert deal was made between the three men who escaped and the Saudi authorities.
He and two other attackers still remain at large.