Saudi Arabia has arrested 700 militants in the past six months on suspicion of planning attacks on the country’s oil industry and other targets, the interior ministry said on Wednesday.
The figure suggests that Saudi security forces still face a significant threat from al-Qaeda despite the perception, at least in the West, that the organization has been effectively beaten in the country of Osama bin Laden’s birth.
CIA Director Michael Hayden said in an interview last month that al-Qaeda had suffered “near strategic defeat” in both Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
Saudi security forces arrested 701 people of various nationalities, said ministry spokesman, General Mansour al-Turki. Of those, 520 — divided into five cells — were still being held for involvement in the organizational and ideological plans of the “deviant ideology” — the Saudi official term for al-Qaeda. The others were released for lack of evidence.
The televised statement said those arrested had planned to revive “criminal activities” and that their leaders were based abroad. The detainees included some of Asian and African nationality. Some had planned to use car bombs to attack an oil installation and a security target in coordination with bin Laden’s Egyptian deputy, Ayman al- Zawahri, who would send fighters from Iraq, Afghanistan and North Africa to support them.
RSS