Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, has arrested about 100 people suspected of having links with al-Qaeda, the interior ministry has said.

A statement from the ministry on Wednesday said the suspects were plotting attacks on oil and security installations in the kingdom.

Those arrested included 47 Saudis and 51 foreigners – from Bangladesh, Eritrea, Somalia and Yemen.

Weapons, cameras, documents and computers were also seized.

‘Acts of terror’

The group was preparing to perpretrate “acts of terror” in the kingdom, a security official has said.

The suspects were organised in three cells, two of which were planning to attack oil and security facilities in the oil-producing Eastern Province. They included a Yemeni, who security officials described as being a prominent member of al-Qaeda.

“We seized belts of explosives which they were planning to use in suicide attacks,” the security official said.

Most of the suspects were arrested in the southern province of Jazan, near the border with Yemen. The dates of the arrests were not disclosed.

In 2003, suicide bombers suspected of having links with al-Qaeda killed 35 people in the capital Riyadh.

But a security crackdown helped curb violence inside the kingdom after 2006.

Khaled al-Maeena, the editor-in-chief of Arab News, an English language daily newspaper, told Al Jazeera that the details of these arrests are still coming in.

“The full statement is not out yet. The Saudi ministry of interior and the government are in a relentless fight against all those who create mayhem, confusion and are propagators’ of violence.

“I think we did expect that the crackdowns will come because the government would really like to have this as a terrorist-free country and all those who break the law will be punished,” he said.
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Saudi arrests over ‘terror plot’

(CNN) — Adam Gadahn, an American spokesman for al Qaeda, has been arrested in Pakistan, a senior Pakistani government official source told CNN.

The official said Gadahn was arrested Sunday in Karachi.

Gadahn, also known as Azzam the American, routinely posts lengthy videos on Islamist online forums. He was born in California.

In December, he released a video message in English offering condolences to “unintended Muslim victims” killed in attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. It was a rare example of al Qaeda offering condolences to the families of those killed in the group’s own attacks.

In 2006, he was indicted on charges of treason and providing material support to terrorists. The U.S. government has offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his capture. In a 2008 video, he renounced his U.S. citizenship and destroyed his passport.

Earlier Sunday a video was released showing Gadahn praising an Army major of Palestinian descent who is charged with shooting other soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas. The mass shooting “lit a path” for other Muslim service members to carry out such attack, Gadahn said in the video, which was posted Sunday on Islamist web sites.

“I believe that defiant Brother Nidal is the ideal role model for every repentant Muslim in the armies of the unbelievers and apostate regimes,” Gadahn says in English.

Maj. Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist and a U.S.-born citizen, is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder in the November 5 shootings at Fort Hood and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. Hasan is eligible for the death penalty.

“The Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan is a pioneer, a trailblazer and a role model who has opened a door, lit a path and shown the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself among the unbelievers and yearns to discharge his duty to Allah and play a part in the defense of Islam and Muslims.”

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American al Qaeda Adam Gadahn, arrested in Pakistan

Al Qaeda has launched a new campaign to recruit university students, scientists and IT specialists in Algeria, a website said.

“We appeal to undergraduates, chemists, doctors and IT specialists to join our ranks,” the terror network said in a statement published on jihadist websites on Thursday.

“Remember the massacres that take place every day in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan,” said the statement signed by Abu Muslim al-Jazairi.

Al Qaeda is seeking new bomb-makers and medics who can help treat fighters wounded in clashes with Algerian security forces, according to daily El-Nahar.

Currently, 80 percent of young people recruited by Al Qaeda in Algeria do not have a high-school diploma.

Algerian authorities put the country’s anti-terror units on high alert in December and ordered security to be stepped up at checkpoints following intelligence reports that Al-Qaeda is planning terrorist attacks in the capital.

Al Qaeda claimed twin bombings in Algiers in December 2007 that killed 41 people and injured close to 200.

The bombs exploded outside Algerian government offices and the office of the UN refugee agency in Algiers, killing at least 11 UN employees in the attack.

In April 2007, 33 people were killed in Algiers in a triple suicide bombing.
Source: deccan.com

U.S. Marines search for improvised explosive devices in Mian Poshteh, Helmand Province, in Afghanistan on Nov. 27. (Photo: Manpreet Romana/ AFP-Getty Images)

Now that we know the administration’s new strategy for Afghanistan, what is the Taliban strategy against the United States? Such a question is warranted to be able to project the clash between the two strategies and assess the accuracy of present U.S. policies in the confrontation with the forces it is fighting against in that part of the world. How might the Taliban/al-Qaeda war room counter NATO and the Afghan government based on the Obama administration’s battle plan?

Strategic perceptions

The jihadi war room is now aware that the administration has narrowed its scope to defeat the al-Qaeda organization while limiting its goal to depriving the Taliban from achieving full victory, i.e. depriving them “from the momentum.” In strategic wording this means that the administration won’t give the time and the means, let alone the necessary long-term commitment to fully defeat the Taliban as a militia and militant network.
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The Taliban’s Counter Strategy

How much of a threat is the growing influence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan, and is it pushing the country toward civil war?

The Pakistani military is fighting a major offensive against the Taliban in the volatile northwest.

A weak central government is helpless in the face of repeated suicide bombings that have killed hundreds across the country.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for many of those attacks, claiming it is retaliation against the army operation.

Islamabad is now battling against a group whose government it once supported in Afghanistan.
The seeds of the Pakistani Taliban are believed to have been sown in 2001 when tens of thousands of Afghan fighters sought sanctuary in Pakistan’s tribal areas during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Critics say Pervez Musharraf, the former Pakistani president, turned a blind eye to the Taliban because Islamabad saw the group as a potential counter force against India.

On Tuesday’s Riz Khan we ask: Is the Taliban pushing Pakistan into a permanent state of anarchy and could that destabilise the rest of South Asia?

We will talk to Pakistani journalist and author Ahmed Rashid. He has written several books on the influence of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in South and Central Asia. His latest book is Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.

This episode of the Riz Khan show aired on Tuesday, January 12, 2010.
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Pakistan: Heading to civil war?

Yemeni fighter jets have attacked the home of a suspected leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the military steps up pressure on the group.

A Yemeni tribal source said a number of people had been killed in Wednesday’s air raids in Erq al-Shabwan village in Maarib province, about 130km east of the capital Sanaa.

The source said the wave of raids, which began in the morning, targeted the house of Ayed al-Shabwani, one of six al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leaders who, according to the Yemen government, were killed in an air attack last week.

A military official, who would not be named, said there had been three attacks on the house and one on an orange grove near the village where the authorities think al-Shabwani had built a safe haven for dozens of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula members.

The official said that there had been a large deployment of government forces at the city of Maarib, about five kilometres from Erq al-Shabwan.

Orange grove targeted

During the afternoon, witnesses said, jets twice fired missiles at the orange grove and afterwards continued to fly in the area.

Mohamed Vall, reporting from the southern city of Aden, said quoting the Yemeni army website that one al-Qaeda member was killed in a separate clash with security forces in Lahij, about 50km north of Aden.
“The fighting took place after a government vehicle was hijacked by al-Qaeda and there was an exchange of fire between the two sides in which the member of the group was killed,” he said.

The clashes come just days after Yemen said it had killed six suspected leaders, including Shabwani, of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Saada, a province north of Saana.

Describing Wednesday’s air assault in Maarib, our correspondent said: “[The air raids] started around noon. The government said they targeted the home and farm of al-Shabwani.”

“There were four raids in that area. The government said there was an exchange of fire and that al-Qaeda members were armed with anti-aircraft weapons, which they tried to use against the government aircraft. But the government did not talk about any al-Qaeda casualties.”

In this context, our correspondent noted that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had rejected the Yemeni government’s claim about al-Shabwani’s death, and that the government had not commented on al-Qaeda’s denial.

Airline plot connection

Yemen is under US pressure to clamp down on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the December 25 bid to blow up a US flight from Amsterdam as it landed in Detroit.

Wednesday’s air raid comes a day after the United Nations Security Council added Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to its list of outlawed organisations.

Two of the group’s purported leaders, Nasser al-Wahayshi and Qasim al-Raymi, face new restrictions after the move by the Security Council’s sanctions committee.

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Yemen jets raid ‘al-Qaeda hideout’

KUWAIT CITY: Kuwaiti authorities announced Tuesday they have arrested an Al-Qaeda-linked group that was planning to attack a key US military base in the emirate.

The Interior Ministry said in a brief statement that State Security detained a “terrorist network” of six Kuwaitis who gave “detailed confessions” about plans to bomb Camp Arifjan, the main US base in the country, as well as the headquarters of the country’s security agency, in addition to other facilities it did not name.

The statement did not provide any details. Kuwait’s Alrai daily quoted anonymous security sources on Tuesday as saying that the group had confessed to buying a truck which it intended to load with fertilizer, chemicals and gas cylinders and ram it into the camp.

It was unlikely the attack on the vast American logistics and supply facility in the desert south of the Kuwaiti capital would have been successful due to high security.

The US military in Kuwait declined to comment on the foiled plot.

There was no indication when the six suspects plan.
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Kuwait foils Al-Qaeda plot