By Libya Herald reporter.
Tunis, 1 July 2017:
The Saudi police are reported to have arrested a third Libyan citizen as he was planning to fly out of Jeddah after performing Umrah. The man has been named as 42-year-old Abdul-Ghani Mohamed Ammar Abdullah. There are some suggestions that he is from Misrata or at least that his passport was issued through the the passport office in Misrata. He is said to have arrived in the kingdom in mid-Ramadan.
There has been no statement from the Saudi authorities although one report quotes an unnamed Libyan official saying that the man was arrested on security grounds.
Earlier this week, two men from Zawia were arrested at Jeddah airport as they were preparing to leave after having performed Umrah while a third fled to the Libyan consulate.
There are allegations that the two were involved in the kidnapping of five Egyptian diplomats in January 2014 aimed at forcing the Egyptian authorities to release Zawia’s Islamist militia leader Abu Obaida Al-Zawi: he had been arrested on suspicion of being linked to Egyptian militants. The Egyptian authorities let him go in order to secure their diplomats’ freedom.
His name, though, is now on the list of 75 people labelled as terrorists by the House of Representatives’ defence committee and passed on to Riyadh.
It is meanwhile it is being reported that the Saudis are keeping an eye out for a number of other Libyans whose names they have been given and who are described as militants.
