RIYADH, Aug 25 (AFP) - Saudi authorities have released the wife of the alleged Al-Qaeda chief in the kingdom, Saleh Mohammad al-Oufi, after a month in detention, an interior ministry official said in remarks published Wednesday.
She was freed on Sunday after being questioned over her presence in a "suspicious place," the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat said, quoting ministry spokesman Mansur al-Turki.
Oufi's wife was detained after she and her three children were held and moved to safety during a clash between Saudi security forces and militants in Riyadh on the night of July 20 in which two suspected militants were killed.
The family were in a house raided by security forces. Reports that Oufi was killed in the shootout later turned to be unfounded.
Oufi, a 38-year-old former police officer, was reported to have replaced Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin as Al-Qaeda's chief in Saudi Arabia after Muqrin and three associates were gunned down by security forces in the Saudi capital on June 18.
The four were killed after their "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula" posted grisly photos on websites showing the beheading of an American aeronautics engineer they had taken hostage.
The beheading climaxed a string of attacks on Westerners in Saudi Arabia by suspected Al-Qaeda gunmen, who unleashed a wave of bombings in Riyadh in May 2003. Some 90 people have been killed and hundreds hurt in the violence.
Oufi figures on a list of 26 top terror suspects issued by authorities last December.
Eleven on the list remain at large. The others have been killed or arrested by security forces, while a number surrendered to authorities.
Only six militants, just one of whom figured on the most-wanted list, took up an amnesty offered by King Fahd in June to suspected Islamist extremists who turned themselves in within a month.