RIYADH, 27 February 2003 — A Briton shot dead at a traffic light. Another mugged and almost killed. A busload of Egyptian and Filipino doctors and nurses under fire.
For a country that prides itself on a low crime rate, this month has been anything but calm. Extremism? Tribal disputes? Just ordinary crime?
Whatever it is, in a country nervously awaiting a war against neighboring Iraq, the unusual upsurge of violence is adding to the jitters. “We have not seen this sort of thing here before, and that is what is so shocking,” Arab News said on Saturday, after 37-year-old Robert Dent was shot and killed in Riyadh on his way home. Dent had lived in Saudi Arabia for 10 years and was married with two children.
“Saudi Arabia, so long held up as a place of great safety for all, now has to face up to the brutal reality of so much of the rest of the world,” Arab News added. “An age of innocence has gone.”
Last month a confrontation between alleged Osama Bin Laden sympathizers and the intelligence service left a Kuwaiti dead and three plainclothesmen injured.
A week ago the government said it has referred 90 men to trial for alleged links to Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network and that 250 suspects were under investigation.
Some Westerners have been attacked in the past couple of years.
The government blames a string of car bombings targeting Westerners that started in November 2000 on gangs trafficking in alcohol. Five Britons, a Canadian and a Belgian have been arrested in the bombings and are awaiting trial.
Local officials and Western diplomats link at least some attacks to the Palestinian and Iraqi issues. The officials say there’s no sign of coordination or one guiding hand behind the violence.
Westerners started coming under attack in November 2000, two months after the start of the deadliest violence between Israelis and Palestinians, with two car bombings in Riyadh that killed one Briton and injured four other foreign nationals.
Last year, a Briton and a German were killed in separate bombings three months apart in Riyadh, the capital.
Several more incidents followed.
In the latest violence, an unidentified gunman fired at a minibus carrying 14 doctors and nurses in the northern city of Hail, causing no injuries.
Also this month, a British man came under fire as he drove in Riyadh, an Australian man was fired at while jogging in the southern town of Khamis Mushayt and a British woman almost died in a mugging in Jeddah.
In a letter published on Sunday in Arab News, reader Chet Leckner wrote from Jeddah that foreigners were the region’s best friends, because of the positive images of Muslims that they send home. “So, before anyone pulls that trigger or plants that bomb, he should think about who he may be killing or maiming,” the letter said.
