but Saddam was about power and loot.
Nadine, I agree with you on that. But in several posts you have come out against the Saudi royals. I have always maintained that the Osama brand terrorists will do anything. They do not have any sympathizers in the SA royals? Maybe some in the SA royals are wimpy and would like to negotiate with Osamaites so that they leave the roya;s and their wealth alone. Here it goes.
JAN 10, 2004
Radicals targeting Saudi royals
After crackdown on terror following Riyadh bombings, princes shoot up to the top of Islamist militants' hit list
By John R. Bradley
FOR THE STRAITS TIMES
SAUDI royals are now squarely in the sight of radical Islamists.
After the terror bombings in Riyadh on May 12, the Saudi security apparatus started cracking down on homegrown terrorists.
Since that attack, and another on Nov 8, even senior princes who were once close to the Islamists - Defence Minister Prince Sultan and Interior Minister Prince Nayef, for instance, both brothers of ailing King Fahd - have found themselves at the top of the list of those the radicals have chosen for assassination.
Shortly before the May 12 assaults, when 19 suspects escaped a raid on their hideout, Saudi security sources confirmed that Osama bin Laden had named the two princes as the cell's targets.
And, according to senior security sources, both were again the main targets of an Islamist cell subsequently broken up in Al-Qasim, a region to the north of Riyadh known as the heartland of Wahhabism. Some 20 tonnes of explosives stockpiled underground were discovered at the time.
An e-mail message, purportedly from Al-Qaeda, also threatened revenge against the Saudi royal family over reports that police killed two clerics during a roundup of militants connected with the May 12 attacks.
'Sheikh Osama (bin Laden) and the leaders of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan are closely following reports of the deaths of Sheikh Ali al-Khodeir and Sheikh Ahmed al-Khalidi,' said the message, reported by the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi.
'If it was especially confirmed that Sheikh Ali al-Khodeir was martyred, then our response against the Al-Saud family would be as great as the sheikh is to us,' the e-mail added.
A clearly shaken Prince Nayef gave a public assurance the same day that the three had been captured, but not killed, adding they were being held unharmed and had even been visited by their near and dear. There were other indications that the prince was taking the threats to his life personally.
A 4m-high reinforced concrete wall was erected the following week around his already heavily fortified Interior Ministry building in Jeddah.
Sheikhs Khodeir and Khalidi and another cleric, Nasser al-Fahd, were arrested during a roundup of militants in the holy city of Medina.
They enjoy a massive following among Saudi Arabia's radicalised youth, and had urged Saudis to help foil a manhunt for the 19 militants who escaped the May shootout with police.
However, in prime-time television interviews, they later rescinded the contents of fatwas posted on websites while they were on the run and which called for attacks against security personnel.
The government-controlled media made much of their repentance and the Western media talked of a defining moment in the Saudi 'war on terror'.
But the state security apparatus - which has been in the forefront of the recent crackdown on Islamists in Saudi Arabia, earning the wrath of both Al-Qaeda sympathisers within their ranks and those who have taken up arms independently - has itself come under recent attack.
Just last month, a car belonging to a senior Saudi security officer was blown up. Lieutenant-Colonel Ibrahim al-Dhaleh escaped by the skin of his teeth.
The Brigade of the Two Holy Mosques, a radical Saudi Islamist group affiliated with, or at least heavily inspired by, Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for that attack.
It also said it was behind an attempt to kill Major-General Abdel-Aziz al-Huweirini, the No. 3 official in the Interior Ministry, who was shot in the capital at the beginning of last month.
The group warned Lt-Col Dhaleh 'and those like him' against pursuing their war against Islamists in Saudi Arabia.
News that the security forces on Sunday defused a bomb placed in a telephone booth in Riyadh, and another at a power distribution station in a city suburb, again underlined that the militants' zeal has been little dented.
According to self-appointed Al-Qaeda spokesmen, the organisation is holding off from a full-scale assault against the Al-Saud because their 'separate fingers will become an iron fist' if their rule is threatened directly.
Better, they say, to let the members of the royal family squabble among themselves over reforms, as popular resentment grows at increasingly difficult economic circumstances.
Thus, an increasingly unstable Saudi Arabia would remain fertile recruiting ground for arms, money and, most importantly, volunteers.
However, those killing members of the security forces evidently do not buy into that logic, seeing instead a need to move away from targeting civilians to killing security officers and members of the royal family.
This appears to be mainly due to the revulsion that the Nov 8 Riyadh attack provoked among ordinary Saudis.
Foes of the Islamists
DEFENCE Minister Prince Sultan and Interior Minister Prince Nayef were once close to the Islamists.
But militant revolutionaries, according to popular radical websites and Saudi security sources, now hold them in contempt, although for different reasons.
Prince Sultan is viewed as a traitor for having allowed the US-led war on Iraq to be coordinated from the air base near Riyadh named after him, and a hypocrite for having publicly denied that fact in the name of Islam.
Prince Nayef, who for six months after the 9/11 attacks refused to admit any Saudis were involved, has been relentless in ordering a crackdown on the radicals since the May 12 bombings.
The two senior princes are brothers of ailing King Fahd. -- John R. Bradley
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