RIYADH, April 27: The Saudi government said on Friday it had foiled an Al Qaeda-linked plot to attack oil facilities and military bases, arresting 172 suspects, including some trainee pilots preparing for suicide operations.
The interior ministry said police seized weapons and more than 20 million riyals in cash from seven armed cells.
“Some had begun training on the use of weapons, and some were sent to other countries to study aviation in preparation to use them to carry out terrorist operations inside the kingdom,” a ministry statement said.
“One of their main targets was to carry out suicide attacks against public figures and oil installations and to target military bases inside and outside (the country).”
Saudi Arabia is the world’s top oil exporter, supplying about seven million barrels a day to world markets. It holds nearly a quarter of the world's oil reserves.
News of the arrests helped push oil up by around 52 cents a barrel to $68.17. Al Qaeda has called for attacks on oil targets.
Five of the men played a role in an attempt to storm a major oil facility at Abqaiq in February last year, a security source said.
It was not clear why they were uncovered now.
Analyst Fares bin Houzam, a former militant sympathiser, said the arrests showed the failure of the government’s campaign to demonise the militant movement.
“This suggests that over the last four years not much has been achieved. Security forces find groups, but at the ideological level progress is very slow.”
Analysts and diplomats say the underlying currents of Islamist ideology and anger at Western policy in the region remain strong.
The security source said the core of the group was 61 men who had taken an oath of allegiance to their leader during trips to the Grand Mosque in Makkah.
But one Western diplomat questioned the announcement, saying he doubted many of the men had played a key role in the plans, which come only four months after the authorities last announced the break-up of a major cell in December.
“It sounds like a small number of serious arrests, but with a lot of padding,” he said, suggesting the government wanted to play up its anti-terrorism efforts. “The specific nature of the targets could be pie in the sky.”
Saudi authorities arrested 10 men in February on suspicion of `terror funding’, but Saudi reform activists have suggested the men were really seized because of efforts to campaign for democratic reforms in the monarchy.
A Saudi intelligence source said the group included many young Arabs and Africans, arrested over several months, who had hoped to recruit fighters and arms from Iraq.
Interior ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki told state television that some foreigners were among the 172 suspects.—Reuters
