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Al-Qaeda arrests put pressure on Saudi Arabia
By N Janardhan
DUBAI - Saudi
Arabia's recent admission for the first time that
al-Qaeda is active in the country - and poses a threat
to the kingdom's security - is rife with domestic and
international implications.
Apart from increased
concerns about terrorist activity, this admission is
likely, at the domestic level, to increase pressure from
Washington on Riyadh to dilute the influence of religion
in Saudi life. This will be a social and political
challenge for the government.
At the diplomatic
level, the presence of members of the US's most-wanted
group in the kingdom will put another wedge in Saudi-US
ties, already strained over the Middle East crisis and
the denial of the use of Saudi bases for the US military
attacks on Afghanistan last year.
In the first
diplomatic exchanges, Riyadh has informed Washington
that it would not allow foreign security personnel to
interrogate the 13 al-Qaeda suspects, most of them Saudi
nationals arrested "several months" ago, but made known
to the rest of the world only last week. Though the
United States has yet to make a formal request to
question the detainees, such a demand is certain to come
sooner or later, analysts say.
Dr Ali Ahmed
al-Ghafli of the Sharjah University said, "Given that 15
of the 19 presumed September 11 hijackers carried Saudi
passports, and Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, accused by
Washington of masterminding the attacks, was stripped of
his Saudi citizenship in 1994, the United States will
view the arrested suspects as potential sources of
information about al-Qaeda's future activities.
"The United States is on high alert," he
explained. "It is not just concerned about Saudi and
American citizens' security, but is also worried about
the danger of oil-supply control falling in the hands of
extremist groups. The Saudi arrests will not be treated
as routine. It is a special catch as far as Washington
is concerned and the demand for questioning is only a
matter of time," he added.
According to former
Qatari justice minister Najeeb bin Mohammed al-Nuaimi,
questioning is bound to happen. "If you are an Arab, you
are a fighter [against the United States]. If you are an
Arab, then you are a terrorist. If you are an Arab, you
must be arrested and taken to Guantanamo," the US
military base in Cuba.
Nuaimi is also a
human-rights activist and founder and chairman of the
defense committee for the detainees and prisoners of war
in Guantanamo, where al-Qaeda and Taliban members are
being questioned after being captured in Afghanistan.
After a recent seminar in Dubai, Nuaimi said
Arab governments were not doing enough to solve the
problem of the detainees. "Some governments are
convinced that the prisoners are members of Islamic
groups. If they were to establish contact and demand the
release of these prisoners, they fear it may endanger
their own political regimes," he added.
Saudi
Arabia knew very well that the al-Qaeda arrests would be
a source of serious embarrassment for it. But it was
inevitable after Sudan's announcement that it had
extradited to Riyadh an alleged al-Qaeda member accused
of firing a missile at a US aircraft near the Prince
Sultan air base near Riyadh, where most US troops
deployed in the kingdom are stationed.
Newspapers had reported about two months ago
that the Saudi security forces had found an empty
launcher for a shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile
outside the air base, a fact confirmed by Saudi
dissident Saad al-Faqih a fortnight ago. Based in London
and campaigning against the Saudi government, the
website of the Movement for Islamic Reform said security
forces had found at least five "incomplete pieces of
weaponry" in various parts of the kingdom smuggled in
from Yemen, including a missile tube near the air base,
none of which had been fired but were meant as a warning
from al-Qaeda.
Adding to Riyadh's embarrassment
was Morocco's announcement last week of the arrest of
three Saudi-born al-Qaeda members accused of plotting
attacks in the country and on North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) ships in the Strait of Gibraltar.
One of the Saudi men detained in Morocco even admitted
meeting bin Laden and undergoing military training in
Afghanistan, but denied having been asked to carry out
any military attacks, Al Hayat Arabic newspaper
reported.
All these developments forced Riyadh
to admit both the arrests and the plans to bomb selected
places in the kingdom. Subsequently, the government
issued a stern warning through the media that all terror
groups would be treated as "enemies of the kingdom" and
be put down with an "iron hand".
"Saudis will,
henceforth, take the war on terror more seriously. They
will no longer ignore rising levels of al-Qaeda activity
on their territory. Extremist elements will be seen not
only as a source of social insecurity, but also as an
ingredient for political instability," Ghafli said.
Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathizers in the kingdom
appreciate both the puritan Islam that the former Afghan
regime prescribed to and bin Laden's known hatred for
the US military presence in the country and the Persian
Gulf. Al Hayat also reported that a bomb was found under
an American's car in Saudi Arabia, while a "suspicious
object" was attached to a Briton's vehicle over the
weekend, but both were removed without any incident.
The incidents follow a June 20 car bombing that
killed a British banker in a Riyadh residential compound
and a similar spate of bombings targeting Westerners,
which the Saudi government blames on disputes in illicit
trading in liquor.
(Inter Press Service)
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