A US national implicated in anti-British bombings in Saudi Arabia had been involved in a financial dispute with his victims, the Saudi newspaper Al-Iqtissadiya said Thursday.
Another newspaper, Al-Watan, said Wednesday that an American identified as Michael Sedlak had been arrested on suspicion of having ordered the bombings that killed one Briton and injured three others, including one seriously.
The US embassy here said Wednesday that Michael Sedlak had been arrested, but added that no allegations linking him to the explosions had been filed.
Al-Iqtissadiya quoted a source close to Sedlak as saying "there had been a financial dispute between the American and the Britons targeted in the two attacks."
Christopher Rodway, a 47-year-old British national working at a military hospital in the Saudi capital, was killed and his wife, Jane, injured in the first car bomb attack on November 17.
Three other Britons were injured in a similar attack on November 23.
The Foreign Office in London has said the motives of the two attacks were unclear, although it was "possible" they were linked. No group has claimed responsibility.
Saudi officials have said the attacks appeared to be personal and not politically motivated, although both came amid anti-western sentiment and Arab anger stirred up by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Al-Iqtissadiya said Rodway apparently owed Sedlak large sums of money.
But it added that Sedlak, who lived in the same residential complex as the Britons, had good relations with Rodway and two other victims of the attacks.
Sedlak, an expatriate who has lived in Saudi Arabia for the past decade, works for a private company, an embassy official said.
"The American is being questioned, and the matter will be clarified in the coming days," he said, declining to explain the arrest. A consular official visited Sedlak last Saturday -- RIYADH (AFP)
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