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Saudi nets 172 terror suspects
27/04/2007 17:56 - (SA)
Riyadh - Saudi Arabia on Friday said it had arrested 172 terror suspects, along with weapons and wads of cash, with some of the militants plotting airborne attacks on oil facilities and army bases.
"Some individuals were training to fly to carry out terrorist attacks... Some of the cells arrested planned to target oil installations and refineries," interior ministry spokesperson General Mansur al-Turki told AFP.
The al-Qaeda suspects rounded up by security forces, including Saudis and foreign residents, belonged to seven cells, the ministry said in a statement which did not disclose the foreigners' nationalities.
Turki said their targets included "military bases in and outside" Saudi Arabia.
He said he did not know which military bases outside Saudi Arabia were among the targets, but added that there were no foreign military bases within the kingdom itself.
The US Air Force relocated its Gulf headquarters from Saudi Arabia to the tiny neighbouring emirate of Qatar in 2003, ending a 13-year presence in the oil-rich kingdom.
Pentagon officials said at the time that several hundred US military personnel stayed behind to perform tasks such as training.
The arrests reported on Friday were one of the largest swoops announced by Saudi, which has been battling suspected al-Qaeda militants since they launched a wave of shootings and bombings, many targeting Westerners, in May 2003.
Turki told AFP the arrests were made over a lengthy period of time in several parts of the vast country.
The interior ministry statement, carried by official media, said one of the cells was made up of 61 mostly Saudi men, some of whom had gone abroad to train to fly aircraft with the intention of carrying out terrorist attacks.
In addition to planning suicide bombings against oil and military targets, the suspects from the "deviant group" - official terminology for presumed al-Qaeda militants - also plotted to attack "public figures", it said.
Five of those detained were linked to a failed attempt to blow up an oil-processing plant, the world's largest, in Abqaiq in the oil-rich Eastern Province in February 2006, according to the statement.
Another cell sent recruits to training camps outside the country "to take part in regional conflicts" and then return to carry out attacks in Saudi Arabia, the statement said.
It was an apparent reference to Iraq, where Saudi nationals are among Sunni insurgents fighting US forces and their Iraqi government allies.
The statement said various weapons and communications equipment were seized in the swoop, in addition to money totalling more than $5.3m.
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