Saudi Claims 172 Suspects Were Ready For Terror Attacks

Taken from the Guardian, UK, April 28, 2007
By Ian Black

Saudi authorities announced yesterday the arrest of 172 suspected terrorists linked to al-Qaida, some of them said to have been training as pilots and preparing suicide attacks on oil installations, public figures and military bases in the kingdom and abroad.

General Mansour al-Turki, security spokesman for the interior ministry, said the detainees had reached "an advance stage of readiness and what remained only was to set the zero hour for their attacks. They had the personnel, the money, the arms."

Most of those held were Saudi nationals. There were a smaller number of Yemenis and Nigerians, Arab media reports said last night. The ministry did not name the organisation the men belonged to, calling them only adherents to a "deviant ideology" - standard Saudi terminology for a jihadi groups.

Previous attacks have been claimed by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. The Saudi-backed al-Arabiya channel suggested they were linked to al-Qaida.

The ministry said some suspects had been trained in "turbulent areas", an apparent reference to Iraq. Some had been "sent to other countries to study flying in preparation for using them to carry out terrorist attacks inside the kingdom". The Saudi captives had sworn allegiance to their unnamed leader at the Kab'a in Mecca, Islam's holiest site, it said.

The ministry statement also said the men had operated in seven separate cells and had been found in possession of 20m riyals (£2.6m) as well as weapons and communications equipment.

One group planned to attack a prison in Jeddah.

The unprecedented scale of the arrests seemed to undermine official Saudi claims that jihadi terrorism had been all but eradicated by effective intelligence and security, a powerful publicity campaign and inducements to terrorists to repent. Some believed the announcement was intended to signal that vigilant security forces were safeguarding the world's largest oil producer and exporter.

The Saudi state TV channel al-Akhbariya broadcast footage of weapons discovered buried in the desert. These included AK-47 and other rifles, plastic explosives, magazines, and handguns wrapped in plastic sheeting. It showed investigators smashing tiled floors with hammers to uncover pipes containing weapons. In one scene, an official upends a pipe and bullets and packets of explosives spill out.

Prince Nayef, the powerful Saudi interior minister, signalled last week that an important security announcement was imminent. But western diplomats said yesterday they were puzzled by some of the details that had been released.

The large number suggested that some of those arrested were likely to have been neighbours, acquaintances and contacts of a much smaller number of militants. It also seemed likely the seven cells had been rounded up separately but announced simultaneously to make a greater public impact.

According to official figures, about 144 foreigners and Saudis, including security personnel, and 120 militants have died in attacks and clashes with police since May 2003, when al-Qaida suicide bombers hit western housing compounds in Riyadh.

In May 2004, 22 people, including an American, a Briton and an Italian, died in an attack on oil company and housing compounds in Khobar.

Days later, gunmen killed Simon Cumbers, an Irish cameraman working for the BBC, and seriously wounded his British colleague Frank Gardner as they filmed in Riyadh.

The last terrorist attack in the kingdom was in February, when four French expatriates were shot dead near Medina.

Recommended Reading:
Telegraph, UK, 03/04/2007: Saudi Arabia Hails Project To Reform Fighters