Saudis retaliate for beheading

[Chanman]

Al-Qaeda cell leader killed after American's slaying appears on Web


11:02 PM CDT on Friday, June 18, 2004


Associated Press



RIYADH, Saudi Arabia ? An al-Qaeda cell beheaded American engineer Paul M. Johnson Jr., posting grisly photographs of the hostage's severed head Friday. Hours later, Saudi security forces tracked down and killed the leader of the terrorist group, according to Saudi and U.S. officials.

President Bush vowed that "America will not be intimidated by these kinds of extremist thugs."

In a swift retaliation shortly after discovering Mr. Johnson's body, Saudi police swooped down on the al-Malz neighborhood in central Riyadh and exchanged fire with al-Qaeda suspects. Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, the reputed leader of al-Qaeda in the kingdom, was killed along with two other militants, Saudi officials said.

A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed Mr. al-Moqrin's killing. A Saudi official said forensic tests would be conducted on the body to confirm his identity.

The killing of Mr. al-Moqrin, 31, would be a coup for the Saudi government, which has been under intense pressure to halt a wave of attacks against Westerners in the kingdom. In a video posted on the Internet on Tuesday, a hooded Mr. al-Moqrin held an assault rifle and shouted demands for the release of al-Qaeda prisoners as a blindfolded Mr. Johnson sat in a chair.

A senior Saudi official in Washington said a second operation aimed at al-Qaeda supporters or suspects was under way.

The executioners' photographs and statement, in the name of Fallujah Brigade of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, appeared on a Web site hours after Mr. Johnson's wife went on Arab television and tearfully pleaded for his release.

Mr. Johnson, who had worked in Saudi Arabia for more than a decade, was the latest victim of an escalating campaign of violence against Westerners that aims to drive foreign workers from the kingdom and undermine the ruling royal family, hated by al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda's leader, is a Saudi exile.

"In answer to what we promised ... to kill the hostage Paul Marshall [Johnson] after the period is over ... the infidel got his fair treatment," the al-Qaeda statement said.

"Let him taste something of what Muslims have long tasted from Apache helicopter fire and missiles," the statement said.

Mr. Johnson, 49, who worked on Apache attack helicopter systems for Lockheed Martin, was kidnapped last weekend by militants who threatened to kill him by Friday if the kingdom did not release its al-Qaeda prisoners. The Saudi government rejected the demands.

At the top of the list of suspects was Mr. al-Moqrin, believed to have been involved in the May attacks on housing compounds in Riyadh, as well as other attacks in the kingdom. Mr. al-Moqrin's group has claimed responsibility for most attacks against Westerners in Saudi Arabia in the past two months.

Mr. Bush, who learned of Mr. Johnson's death after a speech to troops at Fort Lewis, Wash., said the killing "shows the evil nature of the enemy we face."

"They're trying to get us to retreat from the world," Mr. Bush said. "America will not retreat. America will not be intimidated by these kinds of extremist thugs. May God bless Paul Johnson."

After Mr. Johnson's death was reported, his family was in seclusion at a town house in Galloway Township, N.J., where they have been holding a vigil.

John Hayes, a childhood friend of Mr. Johnson's, was overcome with emotion.

"It's just unbelievable. He didn't deserve that," said Mr. Hayes, 50. "This man wasn't even fighting a war over there."

One of the three photographs posted on the Web site showed a man's head, face toward the camera, being held by a hand. The two others showed a beheaded body lying prone on a bed, with the severed head placed in the small of his back, the clothes underneath bloodied. One showed a bloody knife resting on the face.

The beheaded body was in a bright orange jumpsuit, similar to one Mr. Johnson is seen wearing in videos released by the kidnappers.

"To the Americans and whoever is their ally in the infidel and criminal world and their allies in the war against Islam, this action is punishment to them and a lesson for them to know that whoever steps foot in our country, this decisive action will be his fate," the al-Qaeda statement said.

There are 35,000 Americans among the millions of Westerners who work in Saudi Arabia.

Soon after the statement appeared, the Web site was inaccessible, with a message saying it was closed for maintenance.

Mr. Johnson is the second American to be kidnapped and beheaded in the Middle East in just over a month.

American businessman Nick Berg was beheaded by his captors in Iraq, and his last moments later appeared on a videotape posted on an al-Qaeda-linked Web site. His body was found May 12. U.S. officials say al-Qaeda-linked Muslim militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may have been Mr. Berg's killer.

Mr. Johnson's beheading is the latest in a new, more dramatic wave of terror attacks for Saudi Arabia: bodies dragged on streets, traffic police blown up in their offices, hotel guests taken hostage and a chef shot at an ATM. The attacks have killed dozens of people, mostly foreigners, over the last two months.

The violence is escalating despite a campaign by the government to root out terrorism, leaving many wondering whether the attacks are just the beginning or ? as the government insists ? the last gasps of a desperate group reacting to the pressure of the hunt.

Former Deputy Minister of Interior Ibrahim Alebaji acknowledged the shortcomings of Saudi security forces.

"Our security apparatus is not well trained in combating terrorism, but they are learning," Mr. Alebaji said on Saudi television. He added that the Interior Ministry could not defeat terrorism without greater public cooperation.

But residents of three Islamic fundamentalist districts in Riyadh, interviewed before news broke of Mr. Johnson's killing, suggested that the kidnappers enjoyed popular support.

Dallas Morning News 6/19/04

 

[ceciol]

If these guys are known terrorists, why is it so hard to hunt them down -before- they kill people, and so easy -after-?

 

[StevieD]

"If these guys are known terrorists, why is it so hard to hunt them down -before- they kill people, and so easy -after-?"

Great question, ceciol.

 

[AR182]

ceciol,

it does seem fishy that the saudi's found these thugs almost immediately after alqaeda declared that they killed paul johnson.

 

[Blackman]

I agree it is very fishy -- the explaination is that they found them while they were disposing of his body.

I find it very hard to believe that theyhead of a terriorist cell is doing that kind of "dirty work" himself and that he doesn't have much lower ranking people that clean up after him. If true it just doesn't make sense to me.

 

[kosar]

Obviously Al-Queda isn't the most reliable source of info, but neither is Saudi Arabia. Even if just some of this is true, it would explain a lot regarding the immediate 'retaliation.'



Al Qaeda militants say they were helped by Saudi forces
Monday, June 21, 2004 Posted: 6:04 AM EDT (1004 GMT)


RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (CNN) -- Islamic militants who abducted and beheaded American engineer Paul Johnson say sympathetic Saudi security forces aided their kidnapping operation with police uniforms and vehicles -- an allegation a top Saudi official denied.

Saudi authorities continued their search Sunday night for the men behind the kidnapping, storming several buildings in the neighborhood where cell leader Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin was killed after Johnson's death.

It was not immediately clear whether anyone had been taken into custody as a result of the raid.

In a lengthy narrative about the kidnapping that was posted Sunday on the Islamist Web site Voice of Jihad, Johnson's kidnappers said they stopped his car at a fake checkpoint, transferred him to another car and took him to another location.

But Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign policy adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, told CNN the claim fell "in the realm of fiction."

"It's very easy to obtain police uniforms, military uniforms," he told CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. "You go to a surplus store, and you get all you want."

Johnson was working for Lockheed Martin on June 12, when he was kidnapped. After a 72-hour deadline passed without the demanded release of all al Qaeda prisoners and the departure of all Westerners from the kingdom, photographs of Johnson's head and body were posted on the Web site.

Hours later, al-Muqrin and three others were killed in a gun battle with Saudi police, and 12 other suspected members of the cell were captured.

About 7 p.m. Sunday (noon ET), police surrounded and raided several buildings in Riyadh, where residents told police that suspected al Qaeda members had taken refuge.

The kingdom's interior ministry, which oversees its internal security forces, "is on the forefront of the war against terror," al-Jubeir said.

"The notion that our security services are infiltrated by the terrorists really doesn't hold," he said. "If that were the case, they would not be going after soft targets. They would be going after government installations."

Saudi officials and the al Qaeda cell that claimed responsibility for Johnson's killing identified the three militants killed with al-Muqrin as Faisal al-Dakhil -- number 11 on Saudi Arabia's list -- Turki al Muteiri and Ibrahim al Durayhim.

A Saudi security officer was killed and two were wounded in the operations, al-Jubeir said.

Al-Jubeir said incidents like Johnson's killing would not weaken Saudi Arabia's commitment to "go after" terrorist elements.

"They believe that if foreigners leave Saudi Arabia, and in particular Americans and other Westerners, that our economy will be crippled and our government will be weakened," he said. "It is a difficult time, but it is a manageable time. We believe that we still have control over safety in Saudi Arabia."

"We will be very vigilant in trying to ensure the safety of everybody in the kingdom," he said. "And we will be merciless when we go after the terrorists who try to wreak havoc on our society."

Critics have accused Saudi Arabia's monarchy of giving financial support to terrorists, but a staff report issued last week by the U.S. Senate's independent commission on the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks found no such evidence, a finding that al-Jubeir said "vindicated" his country.

Two members of the commission said Sunday that Saudi Arabia, along with Pakistan, had passively supported the activities of terrorists within their borders by failing to act against them, but added that that no longer appeared to be the case.

"That era is over," said former Navy Secretary John Lehman. "They now recognize the threats, and I think they are cooperating with us." (Full story)

Lehman and fellow commission member Richard Ben-Veniste each noted, however, that some Islamic schools -- madrassas -- still pose a problem.

"The history of providing support for the madrassas -- in which children are taught to hate those who do not share their common beliefs and that it is acceptable to attack, in violent forms rather than in discourses, differences in philosophies, culture and religion -- has been a principal source of worldwide unrest and support of elements hostile to Western ideas and civilization," Ben-Veniste.

"We are hopeful that now that the Saudis in particular have seen the results of these years of support of this kind of a movement, that they will now move to change what has been in place for so long."

 

[DOGS THAT BARK]

Ditto with what Blackman said. Intial reports were someone reported license # of car disposing of body--now no body.
Wonder what real scoop is?

 

[TonyTT]

Guys,

The bottom line here is that I trust those bastards about as much as I trust that Pakistani ISI.
Subversive organizations have had a long history of being infiltrated by intell organizations. I'd be shocked to hear that they haven't at least TRIED to infiltrate...especially in virtual police states such as these. IF there's any infiltration at all you can bet that the Saudi secret police and the Pakistani ISI are at the heart of it. Hell from what I understand the Pakiistani ISI was intrumental in setting up the Taliban in Afghanistan in the first place.

TT

 

[Chanman]

Saudis Wrestle With Al Qaeda Demons

Saudis Wrestle With Al Qaeda Demons

The Kingdom's rulers are divided over how to face the terror challenge. Their fate may be linked with Iraq's
By TONY KARON

Wednesday, Jun. 16, 2004
The world is once again waiting for another gruesome terrorist execution video to be posted online - not from Iraq, this time, but from Saudi Arabia. Lockheed-Martin engineer Paul Johnson, 49, of New Jersey, was kidnapped in Riyadh, Saturday, and an al-Qaeda aligned web site on Tuesday posted video footage of him in captivity with a warning that he would be executed within 72 hours unless a list of named militants currently in Saudi custody are released. Saudi authorities have vowed to find Mr. Johnson and crush those involved in acts of kidnapping and terror. But the ultimatum highlights a growing sense of crisis over the apparent inability of Saudi authorities to snuff out an al-Qaeda terror campaign that has raged on their own soil for more than a year.

Saudi Arabia is not a democracy, and policy debates among the powerful princes at the top echelon of the Royal Family occur under a veil of silence. But divisions within the House of Saud over how to respond to al Qaeda's campaign are increasingly plain to see. A recent public statement by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, appeared to chide some of his uncles responsible for the nation's security as he demanded an all-out war on al-Qaeda: "War means war," wrote Bandar. "It does not mean Boy Scout camp. It is a war that does not mean delicacy, but brutality." More important, he said, was to clearly define the enemy: "If we deal (with them) hesitantly, in hope that (the terrorists) are Muslim youths who have been misled, and that the solution is that we call upon them to follow the path of righteousness, in hope that they w! ill come to their senses - then we will lose this war, and this means that we will lose everything that this state and this people have accomplished over the past 600 years."

Bandar's statement was a harsh, if thinly veiled criticism of some of his uncles responsible for security in the Kingdom. Indeed, when he demands, "Enough blaming others when the reason lies within our own ranks!" he is explicitly criticizing a tendency, seen at the highest levels of the Saudi ruling family, to blame terror attacks in the kingdom on alien forces. Prince Nayef, the Interior Minister responsible for fighting terrorism in Saudi Arabia maintained long after 9/11 that the attack was the work of "Zionists," while even Crown Prince Abdullah, the day-to-day ruler of the kingdom in light of the debilitating illness of King Fahd, blamed the same mythologized foreign element for the recent terror spree in the oil town of Khobar.

The problem as defined by Prince Bandar was clearly on display in the authorities' botched handling of that attack, during which three of the four perpetrators managed to slip through a heavy security cordon after a 24-hour killing spree that claimed 22 lives - an escape that raised eyebrows among many foreign diplomats, who saw it as improbable without somehow being sanctioned by the authorities. Others believe it was precisely because of squabbling among different elements in the Royal family with competing authority and approaches that it took 24 hours to check the rampage, only to see the perpetrators get away.

While some, like Prince Bandar, have called for a no-holds-barred jihad against Saudi Arabia's homegrown Qaeda element, others incline towards more conciliatory approaches, treating the problem as one of criminal deviance and premised on the idea that many who have been "misled" onto the al-Qaeda path need to be brought back into the mainstream. Some have emphasized the need for strong intelligence to accurately pick off terrorists through targeted police work, while avoiding any kind of mass crackdown on some of the wider ideological base that shares al-Qaeda's outlook but may not be directly involved in violence - so as to avoid alienating this larger element and potentially provoking a civil war. Others say that while the security forces have shown considerable skill and courage in locating specific al-Qaeda cells, arresting more than 600 suspects and killing scores more in fierce gun battles, little has been done to challenge the extremist outlook with deep roots in S! audi society that replenishes the ranks of the fallen fighters. But right now, the more cautious element may be prevailing: Riyadh is aggressively pursuing known al-Qaeda cells and networks, but elements - particularly in the clergy - who express similar ideas in the public domain are treated with kid gloves despite public promises, reiterated by Crown Prince Abdullah on Wednesday, to do more to crack down on extremism. And a bi-partisan investigation under the auspices of the Council on Foreign Relations has concluded that Saudi Arabia has failed to fully live up to its commitments to crack down on terror funding and the propagation of extremist ideas.

Saudi society is under the tremendous strain of a social crisis decades in the making. The most visible element of that crisis right now may be the apparent inability of the authorities to eliminate the threat of al-Qaeda attacks within their own borders. But its causes may be rooted in a variety of factors ranging from an increasingly unpopular alliance between the ruling family and the United States - widely perceived in the Arab world today as a power hostile to Muslim interests - to a monocultural economy whose oil earnings are unable to meet the aspirations of a rapidly growing population. And the absence of democratic channels for the expression of dissent and frustration has amplified the appeal of religious extremism as a form of politics.

So, when the day-to-day ruler of the Kingdom blames the Khobar attack on foreign elements - "Zionists" being his rather bizarre choice - the coded message to the Saudi public is that the confrontation has no connection with the dynamics of Saudi society, and that the security forces are confining their crackdown to known criminals rather than the far wider element that may sympathize with the ideological outlook of the gunmen. Such mixed message inevitably impacts on the thinking of the Saudi security forces, and Western diplomats suggest there may even be a measure of sympathy for or collusion with the extremists among some security personnel.

Al-Qaeda, for its part, appears to have evolved its approach to dealing with the House of Saud. For years, the movement refrained from mounting attacks inside the Kingdom, and Osama bin Laden's public statements advocated a reforming of the Royal Family - ousting those allied with the U.S. and empowering those more sympathetic to al-Qaeda's worldview - rather than ousting them altogether, a prospect that even alarms substantial sections of the clerical hierarchy. But that approach appeared to change last May, when al-Qaeda launched its current campaign of terror inside the Kingdom. Today that campaign targets two of the key support structures of the ruling order - the oil industry, and Western expertise - and has brought violence and uncertainty to the Kingdom's major cities in what appears to be a calculated move to exacerbate a crisis in Saudi Arabia.

It's not only timing of the terror campaign, which began after the fall of Baghdad, that links it to events in Iraq: A number of Saudi jihadists appear to have crossed the border to join the Iraqi insurgency, and some of the tactics used in Iraq - abusing corpses, seizing hostages and broadcasting images of their captivity - have also been repeated in Saudi Arabia. Most important, however, there appears to be a strategic awareness of the impact that attacks on the oil industry on both sides of the border can have both on Western economies and on pro-Western governments in both countries. Repeated insurgent attacks on pipelines have effectively this week taken Iraq offline as an oil exporter, at least until the damage to the pipelines leading to the export terminals at Basra can be repaired - and the sprawling network of oil pipelines in both north and south remain vulnerable to further attacks. Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia have not thus far directly effected the Kingdom's physical ability to pump oil, but targeting oil towns and Western personnel - to the extent, for example, that all U.S. citizens have been urged by the State Department to leave the Kingdom - send a signal of instability that can wreak havoc on the sensitive futures markets for oil in the West.

Saudi Arabia's rulers are watching events in Iraq with considerable trepidation. They opposed the invasion on the grounds that the resulting instability would imperil the region, and they fear that the current dynamic could break up Iraq into ethnic enclaves, an outcome that would spark new troubles throughout the region, not least in oil-rich eastern Saudi Arabia where secessionist voices among the Saudis Shiite minority would likely be amplified. Riyadh's best-case scenario had been to maintain a Sunni-dominated polity in post-Saddam Baghdad, but right now that looks unlikely. Iraq's future hangs in the balance between a wide variety of contending forces, and the outcome is impossible to call. If it proves unable to contain the Qaeda insurgency within its borders, the same may also be true for Saudi Arabia.

-- WITH REPORTING BY SCOTT MACLEOD/CAIRO

 

[broondog]

I find the Taliban-Al-Qaeda types to be cowards. I say to the Arab world..... take the towels/veils off your head. This way we know who you are. A coward who beheads a civilian, not an armed soldier, to make his point I doubt would have the courage to walk the streets identifiable, hence......a marked enemy