Khobar Towers Bombing

Nineteen U.S. service members were killed when a truck bomb destroyed their high-rise Air Force barracks in Dhahran, eastern Saudi Arabia, on June 25, 1996. Bombers pulled a tanker truck stuffed with explosives up next to the dormitory, and then jumped into waiting vehicles, escaping just before the detonation. About 500 people were injured in the explosion.

The towers housed the 2,000 U.S. military personnel assigned to the King Abdul Aziz Airbase in Saudi Arabia. The service members were at the airbase near Dhahran in order to mount patrols over the no-flight zone in southern Iraq that was declared after the Persian Gulf War.

The tanker truck that pulled up to Khobar Towers just before 10 P.M. on the evening of the attack carried 5,000 pounds of explosives—an even larger cache than that used by Timothy McVeigh to blow up Oklahoma City's federal building. The intense explosion, so loud it was heard some 20 miles away, left a crater 85 feet wide and 35 feet deep.

FBI director Louis Freeh traveled several times to Saudi Arabia to interview suspects held in Saudi jails, and publicly claiming that the Clinton administration was not doing enough to pursue evidence involving the Iranian government. U.S. officials built a case charging leaders of the Iranian-backed Saudi Hezbollah terrorist group, and as the fifth year anniversary of the bombing grew near, the United States indicted 14 men in the attack. The 46-count indictment, announced on June 21, 2001, charged 13 Saudi Shiite Muslims and one Lebanese man in the bombing plot. According to the indictment, the bombing plot had been in the works for more than three years by Saudi Hezbollah members, who wanted to oust Americans from Saudi Arabia. The bombers transported the explosives from Beirut and stuffed them into a tanker truck.

At a news conference announcing the indictment, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said that Iranian [Page 203]government officials “inspired, supported and supervised members of Saudi Hezbollah” in the attack. However, no Iranian officials were actually charged in the indictment.

Iran denied any role in the bombing, and Saudi Arabia challenged U.S. jurisdiction in the case, as the act took place in Saudi Arabia and 13 of the men charged are Saudi citizens. Eleven of the suspects are in Saudi custody, while the rest remain fugitives. Saudi officials stated that it is impossible to extradite the men now in their custody and that the Saudi Arabian government will try them instead. In June 2002, the Saudi deputy interior minister announced that Saudi Arabia has sentenced some of the people it arrested, but did not say how many or what the sentences were.

Four of the men indicted by the United States in the Khobar case, Abdelkarim Hussein Mohamed al-Nasser, Ahmad Ibrahim al-Mughassil, Ali Saed bin Ali el-Hoorie, and Ibrahim Salih Mohammed al-Yacoub, number in the list of the FBI's 22 “most wanted terrorists” released by President George W. Bush in October 2001.