Bangladesh arrests 4 over Saudi diplomat death

Police in Bangladesh said Wednesday they had arrested four people over the mugging death of a Saudi diplomat in the capital in March. Khalaf al-Ali, 45, the head of Saudi citizen affairs at the embassy in Dhaka, was shot while taking a late-night walk near his home in the city's Gulshan area. He was rushed to a local hospital where he died three hours later. Deputy commissioner of police Nazrul Islam said they had arrested four men, aged between 22 to 25, and recovered the pistol allegedly used to shoot Ali as well as a car used by the accused. "We have learned from the detainees that they were out to mug someone that night and encountered Ali. At one stage in the scuffle, a bullet fired from a mugger's pistol hit Khalaf al-Ali in the chest," Islam told AFP. The diplomat had been living alone in a rented apartment in Gulshan for several years. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on Wednesday confirmed the arrests and said the kingdom "hopes the criminals will receive a just and strict punishment over their disgraceful crime." Saudi Arabia is a key ally of Bangladesh and a major donor, but ties have become strained in recent years after Riyadh tightened recruitment from the South Asian country. More than two million Bangladeshis -- a quarter of the impoverished nation's large migrant population -- work in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom. There was outrage in Dhaka last October when eight Bangladeshis were beheaded in the Saudi capital after being convicted of robbery and murder.