Riyadh recalls ambassador from Libya, Tripoli accused of plotting to kill Abdullah

Saudi Arabia said on Wednesday it had recalled its ambassador from Libya and will expel the Libyan envoy in Riyadh over Tripoli's alleged role in a plot to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz. "We have asked our ambassador in Libya to come (back) and we will hand a memorandum to the Libyan ambassador asking him to leave," Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters. The move was related to "the Libyan plot to which the kingdom was subjected," he said.
Details of the purported plot to assassinate Abdullah, de facto ruler of the oil-rich kingdom, came to light earlier this year when an American Muslim activist pleaded guilty to illegal financial dealings with Libya and testified that he had been involved in a Libyan plan to kill the prince.
Tripoli has denied involvement in such a conspiracy.
Saud al-Faisal said his country was not taking more retaliatory measures against Libya at the moment.
"Despite the ugliness of what happened, the kingdom is confining itself to these measures ... in appreciation of the brotherly Libyan people, especially with the approach of the hajj season," he said, referring to the annual pilgrimage to Muslim holy sites in Saudi Arabia.
The American Muslim, Abdurahman Alamoudi, was sentenced to 23 years in prison in Alexandria, Virginia, in October for illegal financial dealings with Libya.
According to court documents, Alamoudi, between November 1995 and September 2003, illegally transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars into the United States from Libya and other sources.
He made at least 10 trips to Libya and met with Libyan government officials.
During a March 13, 2003 meeting, Alamoudi and Libyan government officials allegedly discussed creating "headaches" and disruptions in Saudi Arabia. Alamoudi later learned that the actual objective was the assassination of the crown prince, according to US officials.
According to the officials, Alamoudi helped recruit participants for the plot by introducing the Libyans to two Saudi dissidents in London and facilitating the transfer of hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash from the Libyans to the dissidents to finance the plot.
Alamoudi was not charged in connection with the alleged plot.
Riyadh's decision to expel the Libyan envoy came one day after the United States announced it had put a leading London-based Saudi dissident, Saad al-Faqih, and another Saudi on its list of terrorist financiers and was asking the United Nations to sanction them as well.
The alleged Libyan plot against Abdullah has been a sore point in an otherwise remarkable rapprochement between the United States and Libya since Tripoli agreed to a settlement in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and renounced weapons of mass destruction last year.
Accounts of the purported plot first surfaced in June, when The New York Times reported that Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi tried to have Abdullah murdered last year.
Saudi state-guided media at the time assailed the "ungrateful" Kadhafi, whom Riyadh had helped out of his Lockerbie-imposed isolation.
Two Libyan men attempted to assault Saud al-Faisal in Cairo in September 2003. The pair said they were trying to avenge a verbal slur on Kadhafi, who was called a "liar" by Abdullah at an Arab summit in Egypt in March that year.