RIYADH (AFP) — Saudi security forces arrested seven non-Saudi Arabs on suspicion of plotting attacks during the annual Muslim pilgrimage, the Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat reported on Saturday.
The report came a day after the interior ministry said security forces in the oil-rich kingdom, the target of Islamist attacks since 2003, had arrested an Al-Qaeda linked group planning a "terrorist act" during the hajj.
Security forces "arrested seven people of two Arab nationalities, but not Saudis, at the entrance to the city of Mecca", Al-Hayat said, quoting sources within the security services.
"They were planning acts of sabotage during the hajj period," it said, adding that the arrests were carried on December 16 and 17 but without giving details on the plot.
Al-Hayat said the arrests were not announced earlier so as not to create panic among the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Islam's holiest sites in and around around Mecca, western Saudi Arabia.
Saudi interior ministry spokesman General Mansur al-Turqi said as the hajj was winding down on Friday that the suspected militants "planned to carry out a terrorist act aimed at harming security and damaging the hajj".
He said the attack planned by a "deviant group", the Saudi term for militants linked to Al-Qaeda, did not however target holyt sites in Mecca or the pilgrims.
Al-Arabiya television said the militants were arrested "three days before the start of the hajj season", or at the end of last week.
The authorities were on high alert this year because of the participation of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the first president from the Islamic republic to take part in the hajj.
Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz said in early December his forces had foiled "more than 180 terrorist operations" since a wave of bombings and shootings by the Saudi branch of Al-Qaeda broke out four years ago.
The conservative Muslim kingdom also said it arrested 208 suspected Al-Qaeda militants over the past few months plotting assassinations and an attack on a logistical oil facility.
The militants, who are followers of Saudi-born Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, espouse the ideology of "takfeer" -- branding other Muslims as infidels in order to legitimise violence against them.
The hajj, in which every Muslim is expected to take part at least once in a lifetime if they have the means, has been hit by a series of disasters over the years, mostly caused by stampedes or fires.
There were no major incidents reported during this year's hajj.
However, in December 1979, 151 people were killed and 560 wounded after Saudi security forces stormed the Grand Mosque in Mecca to rescue pilgrims held hostage by Islamist militants for about two weeks.
And in July 1989, one person was killed and 16 wounded within the Grand Mosque sanctuary in a double attack blamed on 16 Kuwaiti Shiites who were executed later the same year.
Four hundred and two people were killed, including 275 Iranians, according to official Saudi figures, when security forces tried to break up an anti-US demonstration by Iranian pilgrims during the hajj in July 1987.
The last of this year's pilgrims took part in the "stoning of Satan" ritual on Friday at Mina, east of Mecca. After hurling pebbles at pillars representing the Devil, they returned to the Grand Mosque before preparing to head home.
According to official Saudi figures, a total of 2,454,325 pilgrims from 181 nations, 1,707,814 of them from outside the Gulf Arab state, performed this year's pilgrimage.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
