RIYADH, Jan 7: Saudi Arabia was unaware of any Saudi “Afghan Arabs” held in Pakistan following the defeat of the Taliban militia, Riyadh’s ambassador to Islamabad said in comments published on Monday.

Ali Saeed Awad told Al-Watan newspaper, only one Saudi national was jailed in Pakistan and that was for a drug offence.

The envoy told the daily he was “unaware of any other Saudis detained in Pakistani jails.”

Awad, however, said that other Saudis might be detained in camps set up by Pakistani and American authorities on the borders between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but the Saudi government was unaware of them.

Pakistani interior minister Moinuddin Haider said on Sunday around 240 Saudi nationals who fled Afghanistan after the crushing defeat of the Taliban militia by US-aided forces, were held in Pakistan.

He added that Islamabad would hand over any Afghan Arab, regardless of nationality, to the United States if they were found to belong to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terror network.

“Afghan Arabs” are Arabs, such as Saudi-born chief terror suspect Osama, who originally went to Afghanistan in the 1980s to help fight the Soviet invasion of that country.

Haider said Islamabad had received a list of Al Qaeda members from the United States and was comparing the names of the prisoners with the names on the list.

Awad said that some 140 Arab families, some of them Saudis, are currently living with the Pakhtoon tribes near the Pakistani borders, and the Saudi embassy will help repatriate them.—AFP