Posted on 06/20/2004 11:51:53 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi security forces surrounded a house in central Riyadh where suspected militants were believed to have fled after trading fire with security forces Sunday, security officials said.
Police cars and armored vehicles filled the area, and blockades were set up at all the entrances to the al-Malaz district — a neighborhood that has been a focus in a widescale security sweep against militants following the slaying of American hostage Paul M. Johnson Jr.
Witnesses told The Associated Press that they saw shooting between suspects and police before some men fled on foot, seeking refuge in a house.
It was the same area where Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, believed to be the leader of al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia, and three other militants were killed in a shootout with Saudi security forces on Friday, hours after their cell killed Johnson and posted photos of his body and severed head on a Web site.
Police are continuing their search for Johnson's body and the militants involved in his death.
Meanwhile Sunday, the al-Qaida cell behind Johnson's killing and a number of other recent attacks on Westerners in the kingdom detailed the abduction of the American, saying it was helped by sympathizers within the Saudi security forces.
The account highlighted fears that some diplomats and Westerners in the kingdom have expressed, that militants have infiltrated Saudi security forces, a possibility Saudi officials have denied.
Saudi King Fahd said Sunday that the attackers would not succeed in their aim of harming the kingdom.
"The perpetrators of these attacks aimed at shaking stability and crippling security — and it is a far-fetched aim, God willing," he said in a speech to the advisory Shura Council. "We will not allow this destructive bunch, led by deviant thought, to harm the security of this nation or affect its stability."
The foreign affairs adviser of Crown Prince Abdullah in Washington, Adel al-Jubair, said Saudi oggicials were still looking for Johnson's body. "We are still combing through neighborhoods. And we hope that eventually we'll find the body and restore it to his family," he told CNN's "Late Edition."
According to the account of Johnson's kidnapping, posted on an Islamic extremist Web site, militants wearing police uniforms and using police cars set up a fake checkpoint June 12 on al-Khadma Road, leading to the airport, near Imam Mohammed bin Saud University.
"A number of the cooperators who are sincere to their religion in the security apparatus donated those clothes and the police cars. We ask God to reward them and that they use their energy to serve Islam and the mujahedeen," the article read.
When Johnson's car approached the checkpoint, the militants stopped his car, anesthetized him and carried him to another car, the article said. Earlier Saudi newspaper reports had also said Johnson was drugged during the kidnapping.
The article said they then blew up Johnson's car.
Security officials said last week that Johnson's car was found near Imam University. Saudi press reports said the car was booby-trapped and later caught fire.
In a separate article on the Web site, al-Moqrin justified the killing of Johnson, pointing to his work on Apache attack helicopters for Lockheed Martin.
Johnson "works for military aviation and he belongs to the American army, which kills, tortures and harms Muslims everywhere, which supports enemies (of Islam) in Palestine, Philippines, Kashmir (news - web sites)," al-Moqrin wrote.
Al-Moqrin replied to critics urging the release of Johnson, saying: "Do those people want to see this infidel carry on the killing of the children and the raping of the women in Baghdad and Kabul?"
The articles appeared in Sawt al-Jihad, or Voice of the Holy War, a semimonthly Internet periodical posted by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
The same day Johnson was seized, Islamic militants shot and killed another American, Kenneth Scroggs of Laconia, N.H., in his garage in Riyadh. Earlier that week, militants in the capital also shot and killed Irish cameraman Simon Cumbers, who was filming for the British Broadcasting Corp. when he was shot, and another American, Robert Jacobs of Murphysboro, Ill.
After the kidnapping, Johnson's captors said they would kill him on Friday unless Saudi Arabia released jailed al-Qaida militants — a demand the Saudi government refused.
Sunday's al-Qaida article said the militants decided to behead Johnson when Adel al-Jubeir, foreign affairs adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah in Washington, declared that Saudi Arabia would not negotiate with the kidnappers.
"The stupid Saudi government took the initiative and announced by the Americanized tongue Adel Al-Jubeir that it will not submit to the conditions of the mujahedeen," the statement read.
The group said it beheaded Johnson, 49, when its deadline expired Friday.
Asked about the al-Qaida statement on CNN's "Late Edition," al-Jubair said, "We have never negotiated with terrorists. We don't intend to do so. I believe what the al-Qaida people were trying to do is trying to justify a murder that is unjustifiable under any faith or under any principle of humanity."
Al-Moqrin was killed along with three other militants in a Riyadh gunbattle Friday night, hours after photos of Johnson's body and severed head were posted on a Web site.
The others killed were identified as Faisal Abdul-Rahman al-Dikheel, Turki bin Fuheid al-Muteiry and Ibrahim bin Abdullah al-Dreiham. Al-Jubeir said al-Dikheel was believed to be the No. 2 al-Qaida militant in Saudi Arabia "working closely and immediately under al-Moqrin."
One security officer was killed and two were wounded in the gunbattle, the official Saudi news agency reported.
The Interior Ministry said 12 suspected militants also were arrested in a sweep of the capital.
Lob a few incendiary grenades into the house, and let these %$#*#! get a feel for what those in the top stories of the World Trade Center went through...
Uh, yer a day late and a sheckle short there, Fahd. The camel's already out of the corral.
If I'm running an ISP, it's a pretty simple matter for a sniffer to let me know that a file of a precise size has passed, and from which connection (header packet in the IP). So uploading a file to a web server would seem like a pretty poor idea to me if I wanted to never be traced.
Nor does encryption matter. TCP/IP header packets are always sent in the clear. That's how the Internet works.
The reason Bin Laden is so hard to find is that he is probably in Crown Prince Bandar's summer palace.
What is it with these people referring to *murderers* as "militants?" ... Gutless reporters. (in a whining voice) "We have to polite and politically correct so we don't offend the 'militants'."
Sheesh!
Friday.....the Islamics holy day....where is the full page ad from CAIR condemming this.../religion of peace + sarcasm
I agree Cobra.....can we please stop calling them "MILITANTS"......they are freaking cold blooded TERRORISTS!!!!!!!
Translation: Bad guys escape--again.
Notice that the article specifically states that the Saudi security forces aided the militants.
The uniforms that the Saudi security forces provided were used by the militants to get Johnson to stop and be unalarmed, so they could subdue him.
Major "religion of peace" alert.
Not sure how our government should react towards Saudi Arabia, but blackening out references to the checks that the wife of the Saudi ambassador wrote out to the hijackers was not the answer to the problem.
Indeed, and our intelligence agencies have their special sources and methods, as well. All bandwidth, especially overseas bandwidth, is fair game for these guys.
I doubt very seriously that any activities involving terrorist-linked websites or email addresses are truly anonymous. But we don't want them to know that, of course.
Therefore, I'm just making all this up, and "militants" can keep on enjoying the wondrous benefits of the Internet with confidence!
I do wish they would stop referring to a body as an "it". It would be so much nicer if they said they will return HIM to his family instead of return "it".
I've had a lot of deaths in my family. I have never thought of my child or my grandchildren as "its". Never. I am sure the families of these victims and of our military feel the same way.
Sending it to an intermediary probably wouldn't help. It just creates an extra hop to trace.
If one hop can be traced, then so can two.
Encryption doesn't help much (simply because the header packets in the TCP/IP world are always transmitted in the clear), but breaking the file up into random sized pieces (transmitted at random times from random sources) *would* help if the recievers of that file never made the final product public.Likewise, steganography (hiding data inside a large picture) is what is known as "security through obscurity," the weakest form of data protection.
Steganography is great for protecting against amatuers. It's merely a false sense of security against the pros, though.
I completely disagree. You're looking at this the wrong way. The point isn't that steganography prevents pros from extracting information from a particular source.
The strength of steganography is that (1) somebody can easily embed information in dozens (or hundreds) of hiding places, (2) you don't know who that somebody is, (3) because you don't know who's hiding the information, you can't trace where the pieces are, (4) there is all likelihood a practical time limit in which to make use of the information. As long as the information is sufficiently distributed, steganography is extremely effective. The only thing that would help a pro is if he correctly guesses the identity of a terrorist and starts sniffing everything that individual (or individuals) communicates over the Internet. Otherwise, the pro doesn't know where to look. See what I mean?
You missed my point. Steg itself offers little. Breaking up a file, however that is done (with or without steg), offers something.
But none of that matters if the final destination is being monitored. For instance, the public web server where photos are posted is an ideal place to monitor. If all of those pieces come in to one final location, it then becomes a simple matter to examine where all of the traffic originated.
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