US arrests Saudi with Qaeda ties

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US authorities said Tuesday they had arrested a longtime Saudi resident of Oklahoma who had trained with Al-Qaeda and sought flying lessons. The Department of Justice said Naif Abdulaziz Alfallaj, 34, applied in 2000 to attend the same Al-Qaeda jihadist camp in Afghanistan, called al-Farouq, where several of the September 11 hijackers had trained. He came to the United States in 2011 on a nonimmigrant visa, traveling with his wife, who was a student. In 2016, he took pilot lessons at an Oklahoma flight school, the Justice Department said. He was only discovered recently after investigators matched 15 fingerprints found on a document recovered by the US military from an Al-Qaeda safe house in Afghanistan in 2001 with his fingerprints in official US records.