Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef announced on Wednesday the arrests of a number of suspects believed to have had a role in the Riyadh bombings.
Earlier, Al Watan newspaper reported that in a well-planned operation, Saudi security forces Tuesday detained at least three suspected al Qaeda members linked to the suicide bombing attacks in Riyadh earlier this month.
According to the daily, the three men arrested, included Ali Abd al Rahman al Faqa'asi al Ghamdi, the alleged mastermind of the May 12 attacks on Western targets in the Saudi capital city. The report added that the arrests were made late Tuesday in the city of Medina, in western Saudi Arabia. It came after two weeks of intensive intelligence efforts by the Saudi authorities, the newspaper conveyed.
The suspected people were arrested at an Internet cafe in the city. A worker at the internet cafe was quoted as telling Al Watan: "I thought they (the arrested people) were strange, but I never suspected they were part of Al Qaeda".
Before the reports about the arrests, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said that weapons had been smuggled into the kingdom from Iraq but declined to say if these were used in the Riyadh bombings. “We have information of smuggling of weapons through the Iraqi borders. We will get in touch with the (US-British) occupation” authorities about this, Prince Saud told reporters. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
