RIYADH, 12 November 2004 — Six people who had accepted the one-month royal amnesty for wanted militants, and turned themselves in have been released according to the official SPA news agency yesterday.
“Following royal orders, all those who turned themselves in to security authorities during the (amnesty) period were released,” an Interior Ministry source told SPA.
Only six people responded to the amnesty offered by King Fahd to Al-Qaeda-linked extremists on June 23 before it ran out.
Saudi Arabia is battling a wave of terrorism blamed on sympathizers of the Al-Qaeda network. The Kingdom has made remarkable headway in its war on terror as it had stripped terrorists of their capabilities to carry out major attacks, Interior Minister Prince Naif said.
The minister’s statement came after security forces killed one suspect and arrested three others in a shootout early Tuesday in Jeddah. The three included foreign national.
Prince Naif said the government was successful in “exposing the ideology and lies” of the deviant group, a reference to the sympathizers of the Al-Qaeda terror network in the Kingdom.
“Protecting citizens from terrorist thinking is a religious and joint duty,” he said and urged families, Islamic Scholars and educational institutions to play their role.
