Posted on 06/23/2003 10:47:52 AM PDT by swarthyguy
KUWAIT CITY (Agencies): Scores of Kuwaitis, including an Islamic culture instructor at the Saad Al-Abdullah Academy for Security Sciences, were recently rounded up by Saudi authorities in the wake of the Riyadh blasts on May 12, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Al-Watan quoted Kuwaiti security sources as saying the Saudi authorities are questioning a number of Kuwaitis on their alleged involvement with al-Qaeda organisation. They said tens of Kuwaitis being interrogated include a Kuwaiti instructor, identified only as M.S., who went missing late last month, and entered Saudi Arabia without an exit record at any Kuwaiti border post. Saudi authorities suspecting one of the cars used in the Riyadh blasts was registered in M.S.'s name arrested him.
The sources said interrogations being conducted with the suspects are closing in on three Kuwaitis who are suspected of plotting several terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Yemen, in addition to their possible participation in planning for the attacks in the United States on Sept 11, 2001. Saudi authorities have detained 44 suspected terrorists linked to last month's fatal Riyadh bombings and other suspected terrorist cells in the country, Interior Minister Prince Nayef said in remarks published Sunday.
Prince Nayef told the Saudi daily Okaz that among the 44 were four women arrested Friday in relation to a terror cell's alleged plans to launch attacks in the holy city of Makkah. Police found weapons on the women but their alleged roles in any plots were unclear, he said. Saudi newspapers reported Saturday the women were arrested during a raid on a flat leased by one of 12 men arrested over alleged plans to attack sites in Makkah.
Authorities have said the plots were foiled in a June 14 raid on a Makkah apartment that killed five terror suspects. The Saudi government has been cracking down on militants since the May 12 attacks in Riyadh that killed 35 people and the Makkah raid.
Last week in Washington, a Saudi official said police have questioned 1,000 people and detained 300 since the Riyadh bombings. The difference in Nayef's tally and the official's could not be immediately reconciled. Prince Nayef said the authorities are seeking other suspects, including suspected May 12 bombings mastermind Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Faqasi al-Ghamdi and Turki Nasser al-Dandani.
Prince Nayef said Saudi Arabia is also closely coordinating with Yemen on security issues. Saudi authorities believe that some of the wanted suspects might have fled into neighbouring Yemen, a hotbed of Islamic militancy and scene of the 2000 USS Cole attack, which killed 17 American sailors and was also blamed on al-Qaeda. Saudi authorities have also nearly finished an investigation with eight suspects wanted by Yemen in connection with terrorists plots there. The eight - believed to be linked to al-Qaeda - will be handed over to Yemen soon. On the financing of terrorist groups, Prince Nayef said groups "possibly" raise funds for their activities through charity organizations. The government is taking steps to establish a new national authority to monitor and control alms giving to control financing terror through charity organizations, he said.
Arrest A Bahraini suspect is among dozens of people arrested in Saudi Arabia in a clampdown after a deadly suicide bombing in the capital, the man's lawyer said Sunday. Abdul Rahim al-Mirbati was arrested on June 7 after he and his wife took their family to the kingdom to seek medical treatment for one of their sons, lawyer Abdullah Hashem said.
"His family in Bahrain asked me to intervene to at least get his wife and children back to Bahrain. "It seems they cannot come back because their passports have apparently been seized." Al-Mirbati was known to have "sympathies" for the extreme Sunni Salafi movement and one of his brothers is among six Bahrainis held by the United States at Guatanamo Bay following the war in Afghanistan, the lawyer said.
Investigations A Moroccan prosecutor has ordered an investigation into eight Moroccan nationals, three of them journalists, for allegedly helping Islamic extremists with links to the al-Qaeda network to plan attacks. The chief suspect, Zakaria Boughrara, "was receiving funds from foreign parties belonging to the movement known as Assalafi al Jihadi, which is linked to the al-Qaeda organisation," the Rabat prosecutor, quoted by Morocco's official MAP news agency, said Saturday.
Boughrara, 33, alias Abousayf al Islam, was arrested in the eastern city of Oujda. Several members of his family were also placed under investigation for helping him to channel funds from abroad, the Moroccan capital's prosecutor said in a statement. He said the funds, whose amount was unspecified, were meant to "finance militants from the fundamentalist organisation, Salafia Jihadia in Morocco, in order to carry out terror attacks."
Salafia Jihadia is one of two Moroccan extremist groups accused of involvement in a series of suicide bomb attacks that killed 43 people in Morocco's biggest city Casablanca on May 16.
"In Islam, we connect the green wire to the detonator, ..."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.