MAKKAH, 21 June 2003 — The arrests made in the latest raid on a terrorist hideout in Makkah reveal that Al-Qaeda terror network is using youngsters to bolster its ranks, according to the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.
Ahmad Abdulrahman Haroun from Chad, at 15, is the youngest in the group, and three other suspects are under 17.
Relatives of some of the suspects who live in Riyadh say that the youngsters would disappear for periods between a week and four months without telling their families.
Osama Bin Laden long ago said in a television interview that his group was targeting young people in particular. “We are looking to recruit young mujahedeen between the ages of 15 and 20 because they are better suited to the idea of ‘jihad’,” Bin Laden said.
A security analyst said that the youngsters may not know that they are part of the secretive network. “Al-Qaeda is not an official organization which advertises itself,” he said.
Police information indicates that the group in its recruitment process targets neighborhoods and sometimes schools.
Not all the members of the group were in the apartment at the time of the raid on June 14 in Makkah. The group had 17 members, 12 of them pictured on television and in newspapers. Only 10 of these were in the apartment at the time of the raid. Five were killed and four wounded.
The other seven were arrested in different locations after the accident. Musaied Al-Khuraisy, 17, and Amin Al-Ghamdi, 19, were arrested near a hotel in downtown Makkah while Majid Al-Mugainem, 25, was arrested after a car chase.
Sources say that the leader of the group could be one of the five people who were killed in the gun battle. Among those killed was Abdulhamid Traowri, who reportedly had strong connections with extremist groups and had spent time in Afghanistan.
