Saudi Arabia detains 136 suspected militants
Source: Reuters
(Updates with Interior Ministry statement, details) RIYADH, Dec 2 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia, fighting a violent campaign by al Qaeda supporters, has detained 136 suspected Islamist militants including a would-be suicide bomber, an Interior Ministry source said on Saturday. The militants included both Saudi nationals and foreigners arrested over a period of more than two months, the source said in comments published on the official Saudi Press Agency. It gave no names and did not specify the nationalities of the foreign militants but said they were smuggling people abroad as pilgrims for training before they returned to the conservative Muslim kingdom to carry out attacks. Al Qaeda supporters began a campaign to bring down the U.S.-allied Saudi royal family in May 2003 with suicide bombings against Western housing compounds in Riyadh. Officials say more than 136 militants and 150 foreigners and Saudis, including security forces, have since died though the violence has ebbed in the face of tougher security measures. The authorities in the world's biggest oil exporter have been seizing dozens of al Qaeda members or sympathisers around the country for months, but the latest round up was large. Al Arabiya television had earlier said 139 were detained but the Interior Ministry statement said the number was 136. The Interior Ministry source said the suspected suicide bomber was part of a ring captured in Riyadh that had secured religious injunctions allowing it to kidnap and kill people and attack banks and businesspeople. The would-be bomber had prepared a will, in which he described his devotion to a radical strand of Sunni Muslim thought, to be read after he carried out a suicide attack. "Through these security operations, weapons, money of different currencies, documents, communications equipment, computers and electronic media was confiscated that reveals these people's thinking and exposes their criminal aims," the statement said. The arrests followed careful monitoring by the Saudi security forces, it said.
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