Militants Beheaded For Bombing Base Ex-Spokane Resident Among Victims Of Saudi Arabia Blast

Four Muslim militants who bombed a U.S.-run military training facility, killing five Americans and two Indians, including a former Spokane man, were beheaded Friday in a public square in the Saudi capital.

The men, all Saudi Arabians, were executed despite threats from underground extremists to attack U.S. interests in the kingdom if the four were punished.

About 60 people - more than half of them Americans - were wounded in the Nov. 13 car bombing of the U.S.-run center in Riyadh.

Alaric Brozovsky, 30, a graduate of North Central High School, died in the blast.

He was the youngest of 11 children and had been working as a civilian buyer in Saudi Arabia for about a year before his death.

Brozovsky left Spokane after high school graduation and visited relatives in the city about once a year.

The bombing, the first of its kind in the kingdom, came amid growing agitation from anti-Western Islamic fundamentalists for stricter observance of Islamic law and an end to the pro-Western royal family’s ties with the United States.

The U.S. State Department warned earlier this month that the American Embassy in Riyadh had received an anonymous phone call threatening attacks if the men were convicted. It said the embassy had also received drawings implying bomb threats against Americans and the Saudi-American International School.

The official Saudi Press Agency quoted an Interior Ministry statement as saying Friday the four convicted bombers were publicly executed so that “such repulsive acts would not be repeated.”

The agency identified the men as Abdulaziz Fahd Nasser, Riyadh alHajir, Muslih al-Shamrani and Khaled Ahmed al-Said.

All four were shown in a state-run television broadcast on April 22 confessing to the bombing.

They claimed they had no links to any extremist group, but said they were influenced by Islamic militants fighting to topple the secular governments in Algeria and Egypt and replace them with strict Islamic rule.

Beheadings are performed regularly in Saudi Arabia for rape, murder and drug trafficking. The executions, prescribed by Islamic law, usually take place after midday prayers on the Muslim Sabbath, and are watched by hundreds of people. They are carried out by an executioner wielding a long curved sword.