A Saudi national is being held in a Boston Hospital with shrapnel wounds as a primary suspect in a string of at least two daylight Boston Marathon bomb attacks, according to The New York Post.
Fox News said the Saudi also suffered severe burns.
Casualty estimates in the double bombing range from two to 12 dead.
If the Post’s claim is substantiated, it could focus attention on U.S. travel policies for citizens of Saudi Arabia. In March, seven GOP legislators protested the administration’s January decision to lift post-9/11 restrictions on travel by Saudis to the United States. The scaled-backed “Trusted Traveller” oversight was slated to begin this summer.
The protest letter was signed by Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and by six of his subcommittee chairman.
Saudi Arabia’s population is entirely Muslim and the public practice of all religions other than Islam is prohibited. The United States has had tragic experience with Saudi jihadists.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers in the attacks of September 11, 2001 were Saudi nationals. In 2011, police arrested a Saudi living in Texas for planning a series of home-made bomb attacks. Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari was subsequently sentenced in November 2012.
“It is time for jihad … I put my trust in Allah,” Aldawsari wrote in his library.