Six days after the weapons cache was discovered, suicide assailants detonated vehicle bombs in housing compounds for foreigners in the Saudi capital, killing 34 people, including nine attackers. Four of the bombers were among the 19 wanted in the weapons cache case, Saudi officials said.
On Tuesday, Saudi authorities arrested 11 terror suspects -- including the three clerics -- in Medina, the holy city where al-Khalidi had been a student. It is unclear what charges the suspects may face.
The government has vowed to crack down on anyone spreading extremist thought.
"Those who claim to be clerics and issue religious edicts are far from that," the interior minister, Prince Nayef, said when announcing the trio's arrest. "In reality, they are worthless."
Meanwhile in Riyadh, two Saudi policemen were killed when a "terror" suspect they had been chasing threw a hand grenade at them, a newspaper reported on yesterday.
Al-Watan daily said the suspect, and an unidentified man travelling with him, also seriously wounded three policemen in the clash in northern Saudi Arabia on Saturday. One of the suspects was killed while the other fled.
It was not clear if the two were linked to the May 12 suicide bombings in the capital Riyadh, blamed on Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
Saudi authorities have arrested a number of people since the bombings which killed 34 people, including eight Americans, and stepped up security measures throughout the Gulf Arab state.
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