RIYADH, 8 June 2004 — Two question marks hang over Suwaidi, the southern district of Riyadh where the BBC’s cameraman Simon Cumbers was shot dead and its security correspondent Frank Gardner critically injured on Sunday.
How did the BBC crew locate the house of Ibrahim Al-Rayyes in the district’s Shoubra area? And secondly, how did the gunmen know that the BBC crew was coming to film that particular house?
Al-Rayyes, who was on a list of 26 most-wanted terrorists, was killed in a shootout with security forces in the area last December.
Eyewitnesses from Shoubra told Arab News that the BBC crew was filming around the house when as many as five cars carrying militants materialized from nowhere. “Who tipped them off that the BBC team is here? If they were part of the Al-Qaeda network, it shows that there was a lot of advance planning on their part, while their intelligence seems to be pervasive,” a witness said.
“This has serious implications. It shows that this is not a one-off incident. It could happen again if some other journalist enters their territory with a view to exposing them,” said Muhammad Al-Homidy, a Saudi journalist who has been living in the district since 1976.
He said the BBC team went close to the women-only Rosana Market. This aroused the suspicion of the inhabitants. “One of the traits of these people here is that they can either be too good to you or hostile if they are irritated by any action of yours. One has to be careful not to cross the line.”
Arab News also learned that recently some Western-looking diplomats were traveling in a car with diplomatic license plates when their driver was accosted at a traffic light by a Saudi motorist. “Are those diplomats from the US or Britain?” he asked. The driver replied: “No, they are Afrikaners, from South Africa.”
“Are you sure?” the Saudi asked him. “Yes,” he said, “they are Afrikaners.” The Saudi sped away.
Information posted on a website purportedly connected with Al-Qaeda calls for attacks on economic targets to drive the Saudi economy down and Western expatriates out. “In Saudi Arabia, Americans are our primary target, followed by the British. In Iraq it is the Americans. In Afghanistan, the Americans. In Algeria, the French. In Indonesia, the Australians, and so on,” it says.
To what extent does Al-Qaeda derive its support from Suwaidi? A visit to Shoubra provided some insight into the makeup of the area.
Suwaidi has a reputation for deep conservatism.
One of the biggest districts of Riyadh with an estimated population of 700,000, Suwaidi comprises Sultana, Shoubra, Badiya, Frahyan and Dakhl Mahdoud neighborhoods. Most of the Saudi residents come from the surrounding areas and from Al-Qasim, where a number of clashes between militants and police have taken place.
A distinctive feature of the area is the fact that hardly any houses have satellite dishes. There is a fair sprinkling of Islamic libraries and an absence of video shops — a feature typical of Al-Qasim region. Unlike other areas of Riyadh, where English signboards are a common sight, in Shoubra all of them are in Arabic.
According to P.K. Moidu, a long-time resident of Shoubra, “some people engage in shady activities. That explains the rather heavy presence of mutawwa” or religious police, he said, without elaborating what the shady activities were. He said muggings are relatively common.
But it is the periodic shootouts that have put the spotlight on Suwaidi, whose date palm plantations make for convenient escape routes for terrorists and common criminals alike.
In November, Suwaidi saw an overnight siege which left one terrorist dead and several security men wounded. Five suspects were also captured.
