[A-List] Saudis Arrest 172 Suspected Militants Tied to Multiple Terror Plots

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

So far the Saudi ruling class have been lucky, and so have their
customers including us, but how long will our luck continue, what with
Washington doing its utmost to multiply international jihadists?  If
they ever get Saudi oil fields, it will be the biggest blowback in the
history of blowbacks. -- Yoshie

<http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/27/news/saudi.php>
Saudis arrest 172 suspected militants tied to multiple terror plots
Reuters, The Associated Press
Published: April 27, 2007

RIYADH: The police have arrested 172 Islamic militants, some of whom
were being trained abroad as pilots so they could fly aircraft in
attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil fields, the Interior Ministry said
Friday.

The ministry issued a statement saying the detainees were planning to
carry out suicide attacks against "public figures, oil facilities,
refineries" and "military zones" - some of which were outside the
kingdom.

"They had reached an advance stage of readiness," said an Interior
Ministry spokesman, Brigadier Mansour al-Turki. "They had the
personnel, the money, the arms. Almost all the elements for terror
attacks were complete except for setting the zero hour for the
attacks."

Asked when the arrests had taken place, Turki said only that the
militants had been "detained in separate waves," with one group of
those arrested confessing and subsequently leading security officials
to the next group, as well as weapons' caches.

The ministry did not say that any of the suspects had planned to fly
aircraft into refineries, as the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers flew planes
into buildings in New York and the Pentagon.

But it said that some detainees had been "sent to other countries to
study flying in preparation for using them to carry out terrorist
attacks inside the kingdom."

The ministry did not name any terrorist group that the militants
allegedly belonged to.

It referred to them only as a "deviant group" - the Saudi term for
Islamic terrorists. The militants included non-Saudis, Turki said in
an interview with Al Arabiya TV.

A Saudi intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity
said that those arrested included young Arabs and Africans, and that
they had hoped to recruit fighters and obtain arms from Iraq, where
insurgents are fighting the U.S.-backed government and Iraqi and
coalition troops.

The ministry statement also said that the militants had planned to
storm Saudi prisons to free inmates.

In the raids, the police seized large quantities of weapons,
explosives and money.

More than 20 million riyals, or $5.3 million, were seized during the
operation, one of the largest sweeps against terror cells in Saudi
Arabia.

The Saudi state television channel Al Ekhbariah broadcast footage of a
large quantity of weapons discovered buried in the desert.

The arms included AK-47s and other rifles, ammunition, plastic
explosives and handguns.

Al Ekhbariah also showed investigators breaking tiled floors with
hammers to uncover pipes that contained weapons. In one scene, an
official upended a plastic pipe and bullets and little packets of
plastic explosives spilled out.

The television channel also showed investigators unearthing plastic
sacks in the desert. There was no information as to when the footage
was filmed.

Oil prices jumped Friday on supply worries after the arrests were
announced. Oil rose $1.40 a barrel to $66.46 in New York.

In Washington, American officials welcomed the news of the arrests.

"Certainly anytime the Saudis or anyone else takes action against
those involved in terrorism it's a good thing. It's something that
makes the world safer and makes America safer," said Tom Casey, a
State Department spokesman.

But a Western diplomat questioned the announcement, saying it was not
clear how many of the men arrested had played a key role in the plans.

"It sounds like a small number of serious arrests, but with a lot of
padding," he said, suggesting that the Saudi government had wanted to
play up its anti-terrorism efforts.

"The specific nature of the targets could be pie in the sky."

Al Qaeda, whose leader Osama bin Laden is a Saudi, has called for
attacks on the kingdom's oil facilities as a means of crippling its
economy and the hurting the West, which he accuses of paying too
little for Arab oil.

Saudi Arabia, Iraq's neighbor to the south, is predominantly Sunni. It
was also the home to 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers.

With over 260 billion barrels of proven reserves - a quarter of the
world's total - Saudi Arabia's oil industry has already been a target
of Islamic extremists. In December 2004, bin Laden called on militants
to attack oil targets in the Gulf to stop the flow of oil to the West.

In May 2004, attackers stormed the offices of a Houston-based oil
company in the western Saudi oil hub of Yanbu.

In that fighting started by that attack, six Westerners, a Saudi and
several militants were killed. Several weeks later, gunmen linked to
Al Qaeda attacked oil company compounds in Khobar, on the eastern
Saudi coast, and took hostages in a siege that killed 22 people, 19 of
them foreigners.

In the most recent attack, in February 2006, security guards opened
fire on two explosives-laden vehicles that were trying to enter the
Abqaiq oil complex, the world's largest oil processing facility, in
eastern Saudi Arabia.

The vehicles exploded without damaging the facility.

The kingdom devotes significant resources to defend its oil industry
against such threats.

The Saudi government planned to spend $2 billion of its $12 billion
military budget last year to protect the country's oil sector, Nawaf
Obaid, a Saudi petroleum adviser with close ties to the government,
has said.

The government is also considering the creation of special oil-sector
troops and an intelligence agency focusing on threats to the energy
industry.

Previous reports have said the country keeps round-the-clock
helicopter and F-15 fighter patrols over its export terminals, with as
many as 30,000 troops protecting the oil infrastructure.

Saudi Arabia began an aggressive anti-terrorism campaign in May 2003
after suicide bombers linked to Al Qaeda attacked three residential
compounds in the capital, Riyadh. Hundreds have been detained in the
campaign, which has resulted in the capture or killing of most of
those named on two most-wanted lists.
--
Yoshie