Saudi Ambassador to Cairo Ahmad al-Qahtani rejected some Arab media reports quoting him and his advisor as saying that Iranians plotted to assassinate him, reiterating that he was not informed of such a plot before certain media raised it.
“I was informed that a number of Iranians had been arrested and a list of names pertaining to a number of prominent Egyptian officials was also found with them,” Qahtani said at a press conference after reopening Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Cairo.
But after I was told of the list, “I was never contacted by the related (police and security) bodies; hence I ignored the issue”, he added.
Late last month, the London-based Saudi newspaper al-Hayat, quoting a legal advisor of the Saudi embassy in Cairo, alleged that a three-member Iranian team intended to assassinate al-Qahtani but were arrested before staging their plan.
A senior Egyptian official had also earlier dismissed the recent Arab media allegations that Tehran plotted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Cairo, stressing that such claims are completely unfounded.
The Egyptian official told the Arabi Press on Tuesday that no terror attempt had been made against the Saudi envoy since the very first day that he took the post until last Saturday, when he left Cairo.
He dismissed as unreal the allegations raised by the London-based Saudi newspaper, al-Hayat, quoting a legal advisor of the Saudi embassy in Cairo as alleging that a three-member Iranian team intended to assassinate al-Qahtani but were arrested before staging their plan.
Also on the same day, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast categorically rejected the allegations, and asked officials of the regional states to avoid comments which harm their own and the Muslim world’s interests.
“The claim is not true,” Mehman-Parast said in a weekly press conference in Tehran on Tuesday, adding, “We advise the regional countries’ officials to be vigilant and think of securing their own national interests and the interests of the Muslim world.”
He said that such allegations are merely raised by those countries which do not care for the Muslim world’s interests and only try to please the Zionist regime and its supporters.
“Such plots which can merely sow discord in the Muslim world are devised and pursued to serve the interests of the Zionist regime and to start a new political game in the region,” the spokesman said
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