A police officer and a criminal suspect were killed in a gunfight — while the body of a missing judge was found — near the city of Qatif in Saudi Arabia's restive Eastern Province, the Saudi Interior Ministry said Monday.
The official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) quoted ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki as saying that the Saudi authorities had received information that Mohammed bin Abdullah al-Jirani, a Shia judge abducted by unknown perpetrators one year ago, had been killed by his captors.
According to the same information, al-Jirani's body had been disposed of in a remote agricultural area near Qatif, al-Turki said.
Subsequent investigations, the spokesman added, had revealed the involvement of two Saudi citizens — Zaki Mohammed Salman al-Faraj and half-brother Salman bin Ali Salman al-Faraj — in al-Jirani's disappearance and murder.
According to al-Turki, Salman had been wanted by police since 2012 for earlier suspected criminal activity.
SPA said Salman and a security officer were killed in a clash on Dec. 19 while Zaki was arrested. It also said the judge's body had been found in the remote farming district of Awamiya but did not say when he had been killed.
Authorities said earlier this year that three men being sought in connection with the abduction were already on a wanted list for their suspected involvement in "terrorist attacks" in eastern Saudi Arabia.
Late last year, al-Jirani, a Shia cleric and judge, was abducted from outside his home in the town of Tarout in Eastern Province's Shia-majority Qatif region.
In January, the Interior Ministry had announced the arrest of three individuals suspected of involvement in al-Jirani's abduction and identified three others, including the two half-brothers.
