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| Arabia |
| Al-Qaeda spokesman sez he's gonna kill royals, Merkins |
| 2004-04-19 |
| The conversation over tea in the lobby of a downtown hotel was clipped and direct and chilling. The heavyset Saudi with the thick black beard wore the short robe of a religious puritan, but spoke of war - war between al-Qaida and the United States. "It will end by the end of America, and it's going to be soon," said the man calling himself Abu Muhammad Saleh, a nom de guerre for a spokesman for the Saudi wing of al-Qaida. The 40-year-old former cleric and religious policeman said he was prepared to participate in an al-Qaida attack in the United States. He said all 30,000 Americans living in Saudi Arabia are targets for the organization, and that those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, were legitimate targets. "Let us assume that those killed on Sept. 11 were not just 3,000 but 30,000," he said. "More than 1 million Iraqi children were killed because of unjust American policies, making the land available to them (the United States) to occupy. The land of these Iraqi children is sacred. It is an eye for an eye." Twelve years of sanctions choked off Iraq's ability to nourish and care for its children, he said. The Saudi government, with U.S. intelligence and law enforcement assistance, says the organization is nearly finished in this kingdom. Al-Qaida's leaders are dead, on the run or hiding abroad, several of them in Iran. "If these people were tried, they would be executed according to Shariah," or Islamic law, said Sheikh Saleh bin Soud Al Ali, deputy chairman of the government's Consultative Council. "This phenomenon was not for us a source of danger, because they only represent a very small group." It is a line repeated by other members of the Consultative Council, Saudi Arabia's royally appointed parliament, and by officials at the royal court. U.S. officials also say the government's crackdown has been effective, though the threat remains. Abu Muhammad scoffed at such assessments. Half the population of Saudi Arabia is with al-Qaida, he claimed, because half the Saudis live in the correct path of Islam. The man calling himself Abu Muhammad has served eight years in Saudi prisons for his political beliefs and firebrand sermonizing. He was reluctant to sit down for this interview, calling Western journalists "intelligence agents." The late-night meeting was arranged through introductions by Islamic opposition figures in London and Riyadh. Sa'ad al Faqih, a surgeon who left Saudi Arabia in 1994 and heads the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia from his north London home, offered a Riyadh cell phone number. Mohsen al-Alwajy, an Islamist and former geography professor jailed in 1994 for his political beliefs, answered that number. Al-Awajy, barred from Saudi universities after his parole in 1998, is a legal aide who for the last several months has tried to mediate between the Saudi government and al-Qaida. After a lengthy interview, al-Awajy offered an introduction to "someone hard" who could describe the views of the militants - someone who was a veteran of the Afghanistan war, a man well known in the kingdom for his radical religious politics. A date was agreed upon, and, after several last-minute phone calls, the time and place for the interview was set for 10 p.m. in a downtown hotel. "It is very rare for one like him to appear before a journalist," al-Awajy said. The man calling himself Abu Muhammad was a heavyset Saudi with a thick black beard. He chuckled that the bellhops looked at him with alarm, "like I have explosives strapped to me." He was in an expansive mood, after watching television images of American corpses strung up on a bridge in Iraq. "I was so happy today to see those scenes from Fallujah. I am so angry at Americans. ... It is why I am ready to serve for operations inside America," he said. Here in Saudi Arabia, he said, all 30,000 resident Americans are targets for al-Qaida killers. "Because they are 30,000 votes to support George Bush. If one individual pays just $1 to the American government, that is $30,000 to the American budget from which these unjust operations (e.g., the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, aid to Israel) are financed." Abu Muhammad suggested it would be a shame if the downtown hotel where this interview took place were destroyed in a bombing for the sake of killing an American target. "I cannot show you signs of friendship, only curses," he told a visiting journalist. "Because of the unjust practices of the cowboys, a building like this could be demolished. Do your best to correct these unjust policies." Abu Muhammad said al-Qaida's goal in Saudi Arabia is to attack Americans and anyone else who stands in al-Qaida's way. He was non-committal about whether the militants are trying to overthrow the Saudi regime. Why would al-Qaida continue attacking Americans in Saudi Arabia when the U.S. forces are withdrawing? "Al-Qaida is an organization of surprise," Abu Muhammad said. "Nobody knows when or how it will strike. When they decided to attack Madrid, they surprised everybody. It is not limited to Saudi lands." Prodded again, Abu Muhammad hesitated. Then he admitted that U.S. interrogations of the prisoners held in Guantanamo, Cuba, had yielded information uncovering the al-Qaida network in Saudi Arabia, forcing the militants to act before they were arrested. "They are found everywhere, but they are more active here in Saudi Arabia because most of the POWs in Guantanamo gave some information about their friends here in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi government was informed. So they acted rather than waiting." Sa'ad al Faqih, the Saudi surgeon living in exile in London, said that al-Qaida aims to overthrow the Saudi royal family with an assassination campaign. Faqih's Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia broadcasts radio programs into the kingdom over a television satellite. The Saudi government tries to jam the signals. "People now think al-Qaida has shifted from bombing housing complexes to targeting the royal family itself," he said, and hastened to add, "It doesn't mean we endorse this sort of thing." "One of the attackers said, `Unless my brothers had promised me to deal with (Interior Minister) Prince Nayef, I would have insisted to survive to bring him this gift,' and he waved a grenade at the camera," Faqih said. The number still at large is guesswork. One government source said more than 2,000 Saudis might be involved. Abu Muhammad said the militants themselves aren't sure. They are organized into small cells of about five men each, and cell members are unaware of militants outside their cells, he said. "The Saudi government has succeeded to arrest and kill some al-Qaida supporters, but they are not able to affect the real members," Abu Muhammad said. "Those arrested so far are the weakest members. Those who carried out blasts in the past were not known to official sources. "When the government announces the name of any al-Qaida member, al-Qaida leaders stop giving him any secret information, from that moment," he said, "because they have a lot of spare members." Al-Awajy, a legal adviser and friend of Abu Muhammad who translated the interview, offered a different assessment. "He made some exaggerations there," al-Awajy said. "It will not last forever. We have a real, complicated problem. It doesn't mean it will last forever." While Abu Muhammad said the Saudi crackdown hasn't hurt al-Qaida, al-Awajy argued the organization has been cut down. Earlier in the week, al-Awajy said, Assistant Interior Minister Prince Muhammad bin Nayef met with some young al-Qaida sympathizers. The meeting ended amicably, with the sympathizers agreeing to press militants to give themselves up, al-Awajy said. "Day by day, they are shrinking, decreasing. The vast majority of Saudis renounce violence," he said. Still, al-Awajy warned that men like Abu Muhammad "are quite dangerous." "Just a few of them could change the face of society, just like 19 of them changed the face of the world" on Sept. 11, 2001. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #6 Probably not a good thing to do. Remember, England is the place that will put a burglary victim in jail if he/she has injured the burglar in defense of their property. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-04-19 11:32:38 PM |
| #5 What irks me is that the one guy lives in North London! I live in the Midwest in the U.S., but if I lived in London or anywhere in England I would hunt that guy down and give him a present. Wake up English Rantburg readers! |
| Posted by: Kentucky Beef 2004-04-19 6:14:08 PM |
| #4 More than 1 million Iraqi children were killed because of unjust American policies Sure ... and building so many of those elaborate palaces didn't withhold a single morsel of food from all those starving Iraqi children. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-04-19 4:16:40 PM |
| #3 I agree with Mike Sylwester 100%. I thought we were getting a marketing team together to get our side out to the world. Instead we've got idiots in the US that believe the crap, how can we not expect Arabs to believe it. |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2004-04-19 3:48:33 PM |
| #2 More than 1 million Iraqi children were killed because of unjust American policies The USA has to do more to refute this lie. . |
| Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-04-19 1:42:44 PM |
| #1 "Just a few of them could change the face of society, just like 19 of them changed the face of the world" on Sept. 11, 2001. Sometime during the next 20 years, when we finally get tired of messing around with militant Islam and totally stomp it out, down to the roots, and occupy all of the Middle East in a vise that would make China's occupation of Tibet look like a love match, I hope this POS remembers his words. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2004-04-19 12:05:45 PM |