Saudi Arabia: Investigation launched on Osama Bin Laden sighting in Riyadh restaurant

March 3rd, 2016 | by Barbara Johnson

Riyadh | Officers of Saudi Arabia’s Special Emergency Force were dispatched last night to a luxurious restaurant of the kingdom’s capital, after witnesses claimed to have seen Osama bin Laden eating on the site.

More than a dozen different emergency calls were made from the famous signature restaurant of the Al Faisaliah Hotel, the Globe, all stating that one of the customers appeared to be the former leader of Al Qaeda.
Both the police and officers of Saudi Arabia’s Special Emergency Force were mobilized on the site, but the suspect and the five men who were accompanying him had already left the building.

An investigation has been launched to determine the identity of the man, Col. Fawaz bin Jameel Al-Maiman, spokesman of Riyadh police, told reporters. He insists, however, that nothing indicates that the man is indeed, Osama bin Laden, or even that the notorious terrorist is still alive.

“We have absolutely no proof that this man was Osama bin Laden,” said Colonel Al-Maiman. “We decided to launch an investigation, only so we can finally put an end to all the rumors and conspiracy theories. The accounts of the witnesses and the images on the security cameras do match the description of Mr. bin Laden, but it could be someone who just happens to look like him, or even a premeditated attempt to use his image in order to destabilize the kingdom’s government. We don’t know for the moment, but we hope to rapidly be able to clarify the situation.”

This is not the first alleged sighting of bin Laden in Saudi Arabia since his alleged death in 2011, and many Saudis believe he is still alive, an unnamed ministry official told Arab News. According to him, at least 8 other alleged sightings were reported since the beginning of 2016, mostly near Riyadh an Jeddah .

Saudi interior ministry spokesman, Major General Mansour Al Turki, announced that his officers would direct the investigation, with the collaboration of the Riyadh police and the Saudi Emergency Force, a special operations counter-terrorism unit of the Saudi Arabian General Security.

 

Osama bin Laden was born in March 1957, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He was  one of the 58 children of Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, a billionaire construction magnate from Yemen, known to have close ties to the Saudi royal family, and many of his siblings still reside in the area.

He gained worldwide notoriety as the founder of al-Qaeda, the organization that claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the United States, along with numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets.

From 2001 to 2011, bin Laden was a major target of the War on Terror, as the FBI placed a $25 million bounty on him in their search for him. He was allegedly killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2, 2011, shortly after 1:00 am local time, by a United States special forces military unit, but rumors of his survival have persisted to this day throughout the Arab world.

After the raid, reports at the time stated that U.S. forces had taken bin Laden’s body to Afghanistan for identification, then buried it at sea. The absence of a corpse is clearly an important fact, that has led many people across the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East to believe that he was still alive.