JEDDAH, 24 December 2007 — The Interior Ministry said yesterday that 28 people were arrested in Kingdom-wide sweep that began Dec. 14 in the provinces of Makkah and Madinah, as well as the northern border region and Riyadh. Twenty-seven of the suspects are Saudis, the ministry said. The nationality of the 28th suspect was not released.
The Interior Ministry statement also said that the arrested suspects were linked to elements from “outside” the Kingdom who were planning to execute “criminal acts” inside the Kingdom. Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, spokesman of the Interior Ministry, told Arab News that investigations were still ongoing to establish the nature of suspects’ relationship with outside elements. “The investigation will lead to the facts that will reveal the identity of these outside elements,” he added.
“The mention of foreign elements in my statement refers to individuals or groups who follow Al-Qaeda’s ideology outside the Kingdom,” he explained. On Friday, the ministry said the suspected militants arrested before Haj were plotting to hit targets “outside Makkah and the holy sites” while Saudi security officials were focused on Haj public safety operations. The targets weren’t identified.
The new arrests followed the arrest of 208 terror suspects, including 32 terror financiers last month in pre-emptive operations carried out by security forces over the last few months. The terror suspects were planning to carry out a number of terror attacks in the Kingdom, ministry officials have said without elaborating.
The arrested militants also included an 18-member cell charged with smuggling eight missiles into the Kingdom in order to launch terrorist operations. And a 22-member cell, which formed a special team to assassinate Islamic scholars and security officers, said the ministry.
One of the cells that was made up of 8 members and headed by an expatriate was attempting to attack a support oil facility in the Eastern Province.
The most prominent religious scholars in the Kingdom were quoted in the Makkah-based Al-Nadwa newspaper yesterday as saying that standing in the face of the deviant group to protect people and the holy sites is a “religious obligation”.
Interior Minister Prince Naif said in early December that his forces had foiled “more than 180 terrorist operations” since a wave of bombings and shootings blamed on Al-Qaeda erupted four years ago.
The militants, who are followers of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, espouse the ideology of “takfeer” — branding other Muslims as infidels in order to legitimize violence against them.
The Haj, which all Muslims are expected to perform at least once in a lifetime if they have the means, has been hit by a series of disasters over the years, mostly caused by stampedes or fires. There were no major incidents reported during this year’s Haj pilgrimage.
