Associated Press
KUWAIT — Prosecutors have been authorized to prepare formal charges against six Kuwaitis suspected of plotting terrorist attacks against U.S. and other Western forces in Kuwait, the Interior Ministry reported Tuesday.
Five of the men were arrested in Kuwait and the sixth was extradited from Qatar on Monday, the Interior Ministry said.
A Moroccan thought to be the group’s explosives expert remains at large.
The suspects planned to use 293 pounds of explosives they buried in the desert to bomb a U.S. Army camp and attack Western military personnel in their homes and vehicles, according to authorities in Kuwait.
They say the men also wanted to sabotage targets outside Kuwait, but no details have been made public about that.
Some 5,000 U.S. troops are in Kuwait, plus several hundred British airmen and women using Kuwait’s air bases to patrol no-fly zones imposed on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War.
Western military contingents are in Kuwait as part of defense pacts that the oil-rich state signed with its allies after the Gulf War.
U.S. forces in Kuwait and elsewhere in the Gulf were placed on the highest alert after the Oct. 12 bombing of the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen. The attack killed 17 U.S. sailors.
The Interior Ministry official told The Associated Press on Sunday, before state security investigations were completed, that there were no apparent links between the six Kuwaiti suspects and bin Laden.
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