Saudi security forces raided suspected terrorist hideouts in Riyadh at dawn yesterday amid fears of an al-Qa’eda backlash after the killing of the terrorist network’s chief operations planner in the kingdom. Thousands of police in armoured cars backed by helicopters sealed off three areas of the capital, including the one in which Abdulaziz al-Muqrin was killed in a two-hour gunfight with police on Friday night.
The battle, in which three other prominent terrorists also died and 12 were arrested, was hailed by Saudi Arabia’s rulers as a serious blow to the country’s leading al-Qa’eda cell. "It is a very substantial setback for this organisation," said Mohsen al-Awajy, a lawyer who says he has worked with authorities to persuade militants to disarm. "Muqrin has been the most important target for security forces since the beginning of this violence." Muqrin’s death, while a breakthrough, has not ended the terror threat, the lawyer added. "We should be even more careful," he said. "The rest of this group may strike indiscriminately."
Militants have repeatedly managed to regenerate themselves after successive blows to their network from security forces. Kevin Rosser, of the London-based security company Control Risks said of Muqrin’s death: "I don’t think it will make a big difference to the overall situation, which remains very dangerous." Muqrin and a few hundred others who had paramilitary experience from years of fighting in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Bosnia comprised only one side of the threat, said Mr Rosser. "More worrying is a second group who are getting into the game and mimicking the tactics. They are potentially more dangerous."
One of the 12 arrested is suspected of involvement in the bombing in 2000 of the destroyer USS Cole in Aden, which killed 17 sailors.
| Have to add him to half the population of Yeman. |
One of the three cars being used by the terrorists was said to have been used by gunmen who killed a BBC cameraman, Simon Cumbers, and badly wounded Frank Gardner, the BBC security correspondent, in Riyadh on June 6. The concentration of leading al-Qa’eda figures in such a small group travelling together through Riyadh during a security clampdown has astonished officials. "They were either so arrogant as to believe they could outsmart the deployment of 15,000 police on the streets of Riyadh - as they may already have been doing for several months - or the group we are dealing with is much smaller than we thought," said an intelligence officer.
Or they thought they still had official approval |
But despite the arrest of about 700 suspected al-Qa’eda terrorists and sympathisers in Saudi Arabia over the past 15 months, security officials believe that there remain between 1,700 and 2,000 trained militants in the country willing to lay down their lives in terrorist attacks. Muqrin, like so many other Saudi terrorists, had returned home after participating in Islamist battles abroad to help lead a campaign aimed at toppling the House of Saud and replacing it with an Islamic caliphate.
| And the difference would be, what, exactly? |
Ramzi Khouri, a journalist on the Saudi Gazette newspaper, said: "Muqrin was a fantastic speaker and was becoming a hero to many people. If he had been able to keep going for a while he could have become another Che Guevara."
| And now he get's to meet Che, in person. |
| And Himmler. Ooh! Ooh! And Torquemada, too! |
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