Cultural differences?
Yeah right. In Saudi Arabia, young men just jump on school buses that have young boys and especially girls on them. That would probably get you 50 lashes in SA.
Terrorism dry-run/test for sure. It should be easy to track down their al-qaeda handlers even if they are overseas.
It probably was cultural differences that caused them to lie more than once to the police. At least the judge was smart enough to revoke bail for these clowns.