RIYADH, 19 August 2004 — Security forces have arrested two suspected terrorists in Riyadh and the holy city of Makkah, published reports said yesterday.
Al-Watan Arabic daily said a 38-year-old suspect was arrested in Makkah on an unspecified date. It did not name him but he was not on the Kingdom’s list of 26 most-wanted militants.
Al-Watan said he was believed to be a member of the group tracked down by security forces last week in Makkah in an operation that led to the killing of “bomb maker” Abdul Rahman Al-Harbi.
The paper said the suspect had “disguised” himself in a tracksuit but the “alertness of the security men helped to uncover his trick”.
Okaz newspaper reported that another suspected militant, believed to be in his thirties and also not on the most-wanted list, was arrested in Riyadh early Tuesday. The man did not put up any resistance, it said.
Okaz also quoted Abdul Karim Al-Hunainy, the undersecretary at the governorate of Madinah, as saying that media reports of the recent detention of four suspects in Madinah and Buraidah were false.
Local newspapers reported on Tuesday that security forces arrested the four suspects following raids on their hideouts in Madinah and Buraidah.
Eleven suspects on the most-wanted list remain at large. The others have been killed or arrested by security forces. Some have also surrendered to the authorities.
Some 90 people have been killed and hundreds wounded, many of them foreigners, in a string of terror attacks in the Kingdom over the past 15 months.
A one-month royal amnesty, offered on June 23 to suspected Al-Qaeda extremists, resulted in only six militants turning themselves in, only one of whom figured on the most-wanted list.
Saudi authorities, who have rounded up hundreds of suspects, have warned that suspected militants who do not give themselves up will be crushed.
