No proof Al Qaeda involved in bombing: Saudi Arabia
KUWAIT CITY, May 21: Saudi Arabia has no concrete proof the Al Qaeda terror network was behind last week’s suicide bombings in Riyadh that claimed 34 lives, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz said in an interview published here on Wednesday.
“There are people who say that the attackers are from Al Qaeda. However I don’t have anything accurate before me that confirms this,” Crown Prince Abdullah told Kuwait’s al-Siyassa newspaper.
“Whatever the roots of this deceiving ideology, it has deceived youths and promised them heaven after they kill innocent people,” he said.
“Those deceived believed in this ideology and sacrificed themselves to kill innocent people and massacre children.”
Abdullah described the attacks as “an act of evil,” saying that, “any other interpretation has no place in our dictionary. Such acts are not religious. They are abnormal in Islam, which calls for high values.”
He nevertheless vowed to press ahead with implementing reforms in the kingdom, explaining he had entrusted a committee “of experienced persons to propagate the true moderate image of Islam and uproot extremism.”
“What we have in Saudi Arabia also exists in abundance in the Arab world in the form of sleeping cells,” he said, stressing that Saudi Arabia’s relations with the United States had not been adversely affected by the attacks.
EMBASSIES CLOSED: Meanwhile, United States, Germany, Canada and Britain closed their embassies in Saudi Arabia to the public from Wednesday, fearing new terror strikes in the kingdom as the hunt for Islamic extremists stepped up.
London and Washington both announced fresh intelligence indicated attacks were imminent in the kingdom.
Saudi forces announced that they had arrested “at least three members” of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terror network, widely blamed for the triple suicide bombings against expatriates in the Saudi capital.
The US State Department said its embassy in Riyadh as well as consulates in Dhahran and Jeddah would remain shut from Wednesday until at least Sunday.
Britain’s Foreign Office announced the closure on Wednesday of the embassy in Riyadh, consulate in Jeddah and trade office in Al-Khobar.
Both missions have repeatedly warned citizens to take extreme care.
Germany and Canada followed suit, but most other Western embassies and missions of other countries operated normally before the Muslim weekend on Thursday and Friday.
Germany’s federal intelligence service, BND, has also warned that Al Qaeda had reorganized and could be planning more attacks in Africa, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda’s “support network and its potential for recruitment in Saudi Arabia, but also in Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait remains intact” despite security crackdowns, said a BND report quoted in Die Welt newspaper.
A number of major Western companies in the kingdom have either remained shut or ordered their Western employees to leave.
Drivers are being quizzed and vehicles examined at countless roadblocks and checkpoints. The government on Tuesday urged Saudi nationals to carry their civil ID cards at all times, saying they must be shown to officials on demand.
Armoured vehicles with mounted machine-guns are parked outside a number of modern residential complexes housing Westerners and concrete barriers have been erected to ward off any more attacks.
Police are also stationed at shopping malls, where all vehicles must now undergo security screening before being allowed to use underground carparks.
The number of shoppers in Riyadh’s main malls has dropped significantly during the past week with senior Saudi officials also warning of the possibility of more bombings.
A number of shopping malls in Jeddah have hired female security guards in order to search women shoppers in this conservative kingdom.—AFP
