(AKI) - Osama bin Laden directly ordered the failed attack against an oil platform in Saudi Arabia in February 2006, Saudi authorities announced on Tuesday. The revelation came from a terror suspect arrested by the police accused of having given logistic support to the suicide bomb cell that sought to attack the Abqiq site. Abdullah al-Muqrin said "an operation of this nature could not be carried out without a fatwa (religious edict) from bin Laden himself and to receive it we had to wait for eight months". A second suspect involved in the attack, Khaled al-Kurdi, revealed that "three cities and oil installations [in Saudi Arabia] had been identified by al-Qaeda as targets - Abqiq, Khobar e al-Jubeil”. Two suicide bombers tried to storm the Abqiq plant - the country's biggest oil-gathering facility - on 24 February 2006 but were thwarted. They were prevented from breaking through one of the gates when guards opened fire on them. The vehicles exploded, resulting in the deaths of the two attackers and serious injuries to two security guards, who later died of their wounds.
According to the statements by the terror suspects, the aim of the terror network was to reproduce in the kingdom the same effect that the 11 September attacks had in the United States. In addition, the cell reportedly planned to carry out attakcs in neighbouring Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Last month the Saudi authorities arrested 172 suspected members of seven terrorist cells, some of whom had reportedly been training as pilots to be used in attacks on state oil sites.