A militant who is accused of killing two police officers in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, in a drive-by shooting on April 8 acted with support from the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria and had served time in a US jail, Saudi Arabian officials said on Friday.
The militant, who has been arrested, told the police that he and an accomplice who remains at large had received guns, cash and instructions from the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the officials said.
The state-run Saudi Press Agency identified the man who was arrested as Yazid Mohammed Abdulrahman Abu Nayan, 23, a Saudi Arabian. The authorities announced a reward of more than US$250,000 for information leading to the arrest of the man suspected of being his accomplice, Nawaf al-Enezi.
The arrest of Abu Nayan came three years after he stood trial in the US for belligerent behavior aboard a commercial airliner bound for Houston from Portland, Oregon, that caused it to return to Portland for an emergency landing, according to court documents.
On the 2012 flight, Abu Nayan lost his temper when he was not able to sit next to a friend and started hitting flight attendants and shouting about Osama bin Laden, according to court documents and fellow passengers.
Passengers restrained him, and he was bound with plastic cuffs until the plane returned to Portland, where he was arrested and later put on trial. After two months in jail, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time served. He returned to Saudi Arabia soon afterward.
Saudi Ministry of Interior official Colonel Omer al-Zalal, confirmed that the Saudi government knew of Abu Nayan’s past. Saudi officials were quoted at the time of his arrest in the US as saying that Abu Nayan had psychological problems.
Abu Nayan appears to be one of a small group of Saudi Arabians who have heeded calls by the Islamic State to stage attacks inside Saudi Arabia, which has joined the US-led air campaign against the group.
Saudi Arabia has faced a number of attacks linked to the Islamic State since the group seized territory in Iraq last year and in Syria in 2013.
A ship that appears to be taking on the identity of a scrapped gas carrier exited the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, showing how strategies to get through the waterway are evolving as the Middle East war progresses. The vessel identifying as liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier Jamal left the Strait on Friday morning, ship-tracking data show. However, the same tanker was also recorded as having beached at an Indian demolition yard in October last year, where it is being broken up, according to market participants and port agent’s reports. The ship claiming to be Jamal is likely a zombie vessel that
Japan is to downgrade its description of ties with China from “one of its most important” in an annual diplomatic report, according to a draft reviewed by Reuters, as relations with Beijing worsen. This year’s Diplomatic Bluebook, which Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government is expected to approve next month, would instead describe China as an important neighbor and the relationship as “strategic” and “mutually beneficial.” The draft cites a series of confrontations with Beijing over the past year, including export controls on rare earths, radar lock-ons targeting Japanese military aircraft and increased pressure around Taiwan. The shift in tone underscores a deterioration
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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) yesterday faced a regional election battle in Rhineland-Palatinate, now held by the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Merz’s CDU has enjoyed a narrow poll lead over the SPD — their coalition partners at the national level — who have ruled the mid-sized state for 35 years. Polling third is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which spells a greater threat to the two centrist parties in several state elections in September in the country’s ex-communist east. The picturesque state of Rhineland-Palatinate, bordering France, Belgium and Luxembourg and with a population of about 4 million,
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