[Al Arabiya Latest] Forty-four al-Qaeda suspects have been arrested in Saudi Arabia, the kingdom's interior ministry told al-Ekhbariya state TV channel on Wednesday. The ministry said the alleged suspects were planning to carry out attacks and weapons using remote electronic detonators and were attempting to recruit youths to finance their activities through charitable donations. "These people have links to the original al-Qaeda organization," interior ministry spokesman General Mansur al-Turki told AFP. "These people, I would describe them like a base, they actually work in the area, recruiting young people, giving young people the ideology of al-Qaeda, and financing terrorism in the kingdom," he added.
In a statement carried by the state news agency SPA, Turki said the group "includes a number of the theorists and believers of the deviant ideology and supporters of its criminal acts." Seventeen Kalashnikov rifles, 50 machineguns and 96 remote electronic detonators were seized, the ministry said. Out of the 44 arrested, 43 of them were Saudi nationals.
Saudi Arabia has battled Islamists who launched a violent campaign to destabilize the country. The violence has subsided since 2006 after nearly 200 people, including foreign residents, security forces and militants, were killed.
The Saudi government has arrested hundreds of suspects during the past year. In February, it issued a list of 85 wanted Islamists believed to be overseas.