700 Militants Arrested This Year, Saudis Say

Saudi Arabia has arrested 700 militants in the past six months on suspicion of planning attacks on the country's oil industry and other targets, the interior ministry said yesterday.

The figure suggests the Saudi security forces still face a significant threat from al-Qaida despite the perception, at least in the west, that the organization has been effectively beaten, or has at least peaked, in the country of Osama bin Laden's birth. General Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA, said in an interview last month that al-Qaida had suffered "near strategic defeat" in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Saudi security forces carried out several operations and arrested 701 people of various nationalities, said the ministry spokesman, General Mansour al-Turki. Of those, 520 - divided into five cells - were still being held for involvement in the organizational and ideological plans of the "deviant ideology" - the Saudi official term for al-Qaida. The others were released for lack of evidence.

The televised statement said that those arrested had planned to revive "criminal activities" and that their leaders were based abroad. The detainees included some of Asian and African nationality. Some had planned to use car bombs to attack an oil installation and a security target in coordination with Bin Laden's Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who would send fighters from Iraq, Afghanistan and North Africa to support them.

It said that the leader of one al-Qaida cell in the Eastern province was found with a taped message from Zawahiri, who is thought to be in hiding in Pakistan's remote tribal areas. Another cell was collecting funds in the Yanbu area on the Red Sea.

The Saudis are also known to be concerned about al-Qaida activity in neighboring Yemen, and in turn about its links to lawless Somalia.

Saudi Arabia has been fighting al-Qaida militants since they launched a wave of shootings and bombings, many targeting westerners, in May 2003. It has also run a large-scale counter-radicalization program for "repentant" jihadis, freeing and rehabilitating prisoners after they underwent courses with state-approved Muslim clerics.

The US, Britain and others have praised the Saudi efforts, pointing especially to the kingdom's grand mufti, Sheik Abdulaziz al-Asheik. He condemned "mischievous parties" who send young Saudis abroad to carry out "heinous acts which have no association with Islam whatsoever".

Part of the problem is that the Saudi state, religious authorities and media actively encouraged young men to fight with the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s. Since 2001 thousands have gone to fight there and in Iraq, where last year Saudis were the single largest group of foreign fighters.

Last July, the interior ministry announced that it had started forming special security units to protect the country's sensitive oil infrastructure from terrorist attacks. Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil exporter.

In April 2007, the ministry said 172 terror suspects had been rounded up, along with weapons and cash. Some were allegedly plotting airborne attacks on oil facilities and army bases. In November it announced the arrest of 208 Saudi and foreign militants allegedly involved in six cells that were plotting to attack an oil support facility, assassinate clerics and security personnel, and smuggle weapons into the country.

Security forces thwarted an alleged al-Qaida attack against the Abqaiq oil processing facility in February 2006. Two members of the security forces and two assailants were killed.