Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a US citizen arrested in 2003 in Saudi Arabia and returned to this country late on Monday, has been charged with supporting al Qaeda and accused of discussing ways to kill President George W. Bush, according to court documents made public on Tuesday. The indictment said between September 2002 and June 9, 2003, while he was in Saudi Arabia, Abu Ali discussed with an unidentified co-conspirator two options for assassinating Bush.

They talked about "an operation in which Abu Ali would get close enough to the president to shoot him on the street and ... an operation in which Abu Ali would detonate a car bomb," according to the 16-page indictment.

Copyright Reuters, 2005