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Saudi thwarts plot to fly planes into oil facilities
AFP
RIYADH
Petroleumworld.com 04 30 07Saudi Arabia said it had arrested 172 suspected Al-Qaeda militants on Friday, seizing weapons and cash, with some of them plotting airborne suicide 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 spokesman General Mansur al-Turki told AFP.
Saudi television showed footage of security personnel searching a house and finding suitcases full of cash, computers and communication equipment. They also smashed floor tiles to unearth sealed tubes containing machine guns.
Further images showed bags of weapons being pulled from deep holes in the sand at an unidentified desert location.
The suspects, including Saudis and foreign residents, belonged to seven cells, the ministry said in a statement that did not disclose the foreigners' nationalities.
Turki said their targets included "military bases in and outside" of Saudi Arabia.
He said he did not know which military bases outside Saudi Arabia were among the targets, adding that there were no foreign bases in 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 kingdom, a key US ally and the world's top oil exporter.
Pentagon officials said at the time that several hundred US military personnel stayed behind to perform tasks such as training.The arrests were one of the largest swoops announced by Saudi Arabia, which has been battling suspected Al-Qaeda militants since they launched a wave of shootings and bombings, many targeting Westerners, in May 2003.
In December, Riyadh announced the arrest of 136 suspected Al-Qaeda militants over three months.
Turki told AFP the latest arrests were made over a lengthy period of time in several parts of the vast country.The 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 operations 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, without elaborating.
Fifteen Saudis were among 19 hijackers who crashed their planes into New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon near Washington on September 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people.
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 ministry.
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.
The "regional conflict" is thought to be Iraq, where Saudis are among Sunni insurgents fighting US forces and their Iraqi government allies.
The statement said weapons and communications equipment were seized in the swoop, in addition to more than 20 million riyals (5.3 million dollars) in cash.
Saudi security forces have waged a relentless crackdown on suspected Islamist extremists in the past four years.
In the latest attack on Westerners, four Frenchmen were shot dead near the Muslim holy city of Medina in February.
AFP 27 1556 GMT 04 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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