JEDDAH (Arab News) — Saudi authorities have arrested 17 suspects involved in past terror attacks and plotting future attacks in the Kingdom, the Ministry of Interior said on Monday, according to Saudi newspaper, Arab News.
In a press conference, ministry spokesman Maj Gen. Mansour Al-Turki said 15 of the suspects are Saudis, including a woman, and the rest include a Yemeni, a Palestinian and an Egyptian. The suspects were rounded up in different locations and at different times.
Images released by the Ministry through the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) showed guns and ammunition, suicide vests, and other bomb-making materials that were seized by security forces in the months-long operation.
Al-Turki said the terrorist cells had in their list of targets civilians, religious scholars and security officers as well as security and military installations and economic targets in different locations.
He said the suspects were found to have provided the Daesh international terrorist group with media and electronic support.
Al-Turki said the network was involved in preparing suicide vests and improvised explosives, and providing logistics, cover, funding, arms and transportation for terrorist operations inside the kingdom.
The network also communicated “with leaders abroad in all their activities,” he said. “The activities of this network went beyond the kingdom’s borders to provide technical and media support for Daesh.”
The Saudi suspects were identified as Ahmed Muhammed Ahmed Al-Bannaoa Asiri, Ismail Saadi Al- Beshri, Hamad Abdullah Muhammed Al-Moosa, Khaled Mashaal Khaled Al-Otaibi, Kholoud Muhammed Mansour Al-Rukaibi, Khaled Ahmed Saad Al- Malik, Bandar Sultan Bakhit Al-Otaibi, Abdullah Abdulrahman Taiwirh Al-Taiwirh, Abdullah Saleh Salman Al-Shammari, Muhammad Fahd Mohammed Al-Qahtani, Muhammad Ahmed Muhammad Al-Ahmari, Nasser Muhammad Mansour Al-Rukaibi, and lone woman Kholoud Muhammed Mansour Al-Rukaibi,
The non-Saudi suspects were identified as Osama Abdullah Sarsor, a Palestinian; Abdulrahman Fares Amer Al-Marri, a Yemeni; and Omar Abdu Abdulhamid Al-Zoghbi, an Egyptian.
The Interior Ministry said the terrorist network was involved in harboring two attackers involved in a bombing and shooting in the eastern Al-Ahsa governorate against the Shiite Imam Al-Ridha Mosque. Four people including two security officers and a civilian and the suicide bomber were killed in that attack on January 29, 2016. Eighteen others were wounded.
The ministry said the group was also involved in a car bombing against a security officer in the capital, Riyadh, in February, a bombing against a security checkpoint in Riyadh in July 2015, a failed attempt to bomb an oil pipeline in the governorate of Al-Dawadmi, and in the murder of a retired brigadier, whose death was announced in February.
The arrests followed months of investigation into the network, Turki said, adding that the militants had prepared more than 25,000 kilograms of adhesive bombs and explosive belts.
Authorities also seized pipe bombs, firearms, silencers and cash in excess of 600,000 riyals ($160,000).
Local Saudi affiliates of the Daesh group have carried out several deadly shootings and bombings in the Kingdom, many targeting security personnel and Shiite mosques. –Additional input from Agencies
