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| Arabia | ||
| Al-Qaeda’s whacking some Soddy big-shots | ||
| 2003-12-30 | ||
| Islamic militants in Saudi Arabia with links to Al Qaeda appear to be making a concerted new effort to destabilize the Saudi government by assassinating top security officials. "Security" in the Magic Kingdom being a relative term, of course. A series of assassination attempts in the last month, including a failed car bombing in the Saudi capital on Monday, have also included a previously undisclosed shooting in early December of Maj. Gen. Abdelaziz al-Huweirini. As the No. 3 official in Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry, he is the kingdom’s top counterterrorism official. General Huweirini, who has worked closely with American officials, was moderately wounded in that Dec. 4 attack, the American officials said. No one has been killed in the attacks, which continued despite major setbacks for Al Qaeda in a battle with Saudi security forces. One Saudi king, Faisal, was assassinated in 1975 by a militant who was also a relative, but assassination attempts against Saudi officials have otherwise been almost unknown. Until this year, most major attacks by suspected Qaeda militants in Saudi Arabia have been directed against American or other Western targets. The Qaeda militants have carried out a wave of major suicide-bomb attacks in Riyadh, the capital, killing at least 50 people in the last seven months. But they have also been punished by a Saudi security crackdown in which hundreds of militants have been arrested and dozens more killed, and secret caches have been uncovered that contained tons of weapons and explosives. "The Saudis have done a good job of taking down a lot of their leadership," a senior American official said Monday of Qaeda members in Saudi Arabia. "But they continue to be very dangerous and to go after royal family-related targets."
Al-Haramain Brigades aren’t al-Qaeda though, they seem to be a wannabe group to fight the royal family while the real al-Qaeda preoccupy themselves with taking out the Great Satan. It’s also a really great negotiating tool for al-Qaeda to have a rogue jihadi group running around whose actions they can disavow. In the Monday attack, reports said the vehicle had exploded while parked in front of a building in the Salam residential district in eastern Riyadh. The site was quickly surrounded by the police, and security officials confirmed that the car belonged to a major from the Interior Ministry. A statement read on Saudi state television said firefighters had put out a blaze ignited by what was described as a small explosion. Youssef al-Ayeri, a militant who was believed to have commanded Qaeda operations in Saudi Arabia, was killed in June in a shootout with Saudi security forces. But American and Saudi officials have said they believe that he has been replaced by Abdelaziz al-Miqrin, also known as Abu Hajir, who was trained at a Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, fought in Bosnia and served previously in Algeria. I think that al-Ayyeri was more the ideologue than anything else, with the top al-Ghamdi being the nuts and bolts guy, though there are so many controllers in Soddy that it’s confusing sometime. My guess is that Louis replaced al-Ayyeri and that Abu Hajir’s taking over the nuts and bolts job from al-Ghamdi. | ||
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #4 Is it time to pull the Religious Police off of the Christmas Ornament dragnet? Nah. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2003-12-30 1:04:03 PM |
| #3 Away we go now, with the Soddie Prince Reel.... |
| Posted by: Nero 2003-12-30 12:30:54 PM |
| #2 A statement read on Saudi state television said firefighters had put out a blaze ignited by what was described as a small explosion. Like Nero playing his fiddle. |
| Posted by: Lucky 2003-12-30 11:13:53 AM |
| #1 you ride the Tiger, sometimes you get eaten.... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2003-12-30 9:52:25 AM |