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| Arabia |
| Saudi Arabia To Try 90 Al-Qaida Suspects |
| 2003-02-20 |
| Source: The Strait Times Saudi Arabia has said it will put 90 of its nationals on trial for belonging to Al-Qaeda. It would be the first prosecution of alleged members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network reported in the secretive kingdom. 'There is evidence that these 90 people belong to this organisation and their cases have been sent to court,' Tuesday's edition of the Okaz newspaper quoted Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz as saying. A little more serious, now that the occasional bigwig's getting bumped off? He said 250 other people were still being interrogated while another 150 had been released after questioning. Among those being interrogated, there was 'available evidence' to show that they had links to Al-Qaeda, he added. 'We have to make sure by interrogating them...their links to Al-Qaeda vary.' Ouch. Not that I care... After the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the Saudi authorities launched a round-up of people with links to Al-Qaeda. Many Saudis were arrested after returning from Afghanistan following the overthrow of the Taleban rulers by US-led forces at the end of 2001. After the Sept 11 attacks, Saudi-US ties took a battering as 15 of the 19 suicide attackers who hijacked airlines and smashed them into key sites in New York and Washington were Saudis. The Soddies could have lessened the impact of that battering by simply saying loudly, "Those sonsabitches! We're rounding up all of them we can find, dammit!" |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |