JEDDAH: Saudi authorities arrested five men on charges of promoting militant activities on Islamic Internet forums, the Interior Ministry announced yesterday.
“Each of the men used more than one username to persuade unsuspecting victims in a decisive dialogue,” said ministry spokesman Gen. Mansour Al-Turki. “One engages in a dialogue thinking it’s with a group of people sharing their opinions when it’s actually one person supporting one thought.”
The five suspects, three Saudis and two foreigners, were encouraging others on these forums to take up arms in Afghanistan and Iraq. The five men were arrested independently and are not considered to have been working together, said Al-Turki. The ministry would not confirm media reports that the two foreigners arrested were an Egyptian and a Syrian. Nor would the ministry divulge details into how these men were caught, citing security concerns.
Al-Turki, however, did shed some light on how the men were using the anonymity of these forums to create a false sense of consensus to other members of these virtual chat rooms. Al-Turki said that through 28 different Internet identities these men would create Internet posts encouraging terrorist activities. Then the men would log out and log in under different identities and respond to the original post affirmatively.
They would do this numerous times with each call for violent acts to make it appear as if a number of other members in the Islamic forum were in agreement with their calls for militant jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Saudi security forces have succeeded in breaking down Al-Qaeda and other armed militant operations in the Kingdom, battling militants that instituted a resurgent violent campaign to destabilize the Saudi monarchy in 2003.
Hundreds of suspects were arrested in the process. The government strategy now is to target the root of the problem by tackling the ideology.
Al-Turki said if the individuals responsible for promoting such ideologies are targeted, it would bring an end to the problem before it re-emerges with more violent acts.
