RIYADH, 5 November 2004 — Seven people, including a wanted suspect, were arrested yesterday in a raid on a cyber café in Buraidah, Qasim region. Two security men were slightly injured in the shootout that preceded the arrest.
The standoff began at 10 p.m. on Wednesday when police observed the wanted suspect enter an Internet café in Buraidah.
An Interior Ministry statement later said that a suspect wanted for criminal charges who is a follower of a deviant group was arrested in a public area in Buraidah.
“When the suspect saw the security forces he opened fire on them which required security men to return fire. The suspect was injured in his leg and was later overpowered and arrested. A gun, and a highly explosive hand grenade were found in his possession when he was later searched,” the statement said.
“Two security officers were slightly injured in the raid,” the statement added.
It did not mention the sort of information the suspect and others were exchanging in the cyber café or whether he was communicating with other suspects in the Kingdom. There was also no mention if the computers they were using were confiscated.
Since May 12, 2003 when a campaign of terror swept through Saudi Arabia, many terror suspects have turned to cyberspace to communicate, taking advantage of the fact that cyber cafes and their patrons were not under observation.
Two weeks later, security officers arrested some terror suspects in a raid in Madinah in an Internet café. According to local reports, the computers they were using were confiscated to retrieve information.
Several months later, and after security forces had confiscated computers, laptops, CDs, and hard drives from terrorist hide-outs in Qasim, Riyadh, Hail, Makkah, and Jizan, it was evident that terrorists in the Kingdom were sophisticated in their plans. And they used computers for either storing information or for communicating with one another.
A directive was later issued by the deputy interior minister for security affairs to the head of police in the Kingdom to inform all police and law enforcement officers that visitors of Internet cafes must register their names, ID numbers, and the time of entry and exit at all cyber cafes in the country. The information would remain with the owners of the cafes for a period of six months in case authorities needed to retrieve information about a suspect.
Random visits to cyber cafes in the capital, Jeddah, and Dammam, revealed that a few if none, implemented the directives. Some owners even were surprised to learn of such a directive, saying they were not informed of such procedures.
Since 2003, Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia have been using the Internet to post recorded messages. A few days ago, it said on a website that it had chosen a new leader for its group in Saudi Arabia replacing its deceased leader Saleh Al-Oufi.
On June 19, Al-Qaeda released a statement on an Islamic website saying it had beheaded American national Paul Johnson after the government had turned down its demands. It also posted on the website photos of his decapitated body.
