Ain-Al-Yaqeen - March 18, 2005

		March 18, 2005

SAUDI SECURITY FORCES CONTINUE THEIR FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISTS.
A MAN WANTED FOR SECURITY-RELATED MATTERS WAS CAPTURED AND THE ARREST OF 18 TERROR SUSPECTS IN ZULFI.
AL-SUDAIS WARNS OF OPPORTUNISTS IN THE REFORM PROCESS.
ADEL AL-JUBAIR: OF THE 26 MOST-WANTED TERRORISTS IN SAUDI ARABIA, 18 HAVE BEEN CAPTURED OR KILLED.
ON THE SIDELINE OF MADRID CONFERENCE: THE ARAB LEAGUE AND SPAIN AGREE TO INCREASE COOPERATION IN FIGHTING TERRORISM BY CREATING A SYSTEM FOR EXCHANGING INFORMATION.

Saudi security forces captured two wanted militants, injured one and killed another man who was with them, in a gunbattle in a residential district of Jeddah.

A woman passer-by was caught in the cross-fire and was also killed in the shootout.

The Saudi Security Forces detected one of the suspects who belonged to the deviant group at a residential buildings at Al-Rabwa neighborhood in Jeddah, according to an official source at the Ministry of Interior.

"Following an intensive shooting, the security men attacked the place and captured the wanted person after being injured. Two of his companions were also arrested.

One of the persons who were at the site of the incident was killed, while a citizen and his wife were injured along with some of the security men," the official source said.

According to Brigadier General Mansour Al-Turki, spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, "a man wanted for security-related matters was captured after being wounded...Two of his companions were arrested. A man who was accompanying the wanted militant was killed in the shootout."

The security forces had received information that a group of wanted men was in an apartment in Al-Rabwah District. At six o'clock in the morning, Saudi forces surrounded the two-story building, closed off streets and nearby schools.

According to eyewitnesses, the security forces ordered the men in the apartment to surrender. The men refused and the gunbattle began which, again according to witnesses, continued for half an hour.

The battle ended with the death of Saad Al-Youbi, the injury of Ibrahim Al-Youbi and the surrender of two of their companions. Saad Al-Youbi, who is said to be a member of the security forces, was at home in his apartment when the other men came to him asking for shelter from the police.

As a result of the gunbattle, five policemen were wounded and taken to Erfan Hospital. Two of them were said to be in critical condition.

In addition, twelve other people policemen and bystanders were injured and taken to King Fahd Hospital. The policemen were taken to Erfan Hospital by Saleh Al-Zahrani, a local resident, who transported the five injured policemen in his own vehicle.

Among the 12 injured people taken to hospital were Yousef Al-Fazi and his four-year-old son. As Al-Fazi and his family were attempting to leave the apartment building, a bullet killed his wife though he and his son escaped with minor injuries.

Subayan Al-Fazi, another eyewitness and a tenant of the building, said he was awakened by gunfire at 6 a.m. and heard the security forces ordering the terrorists to surrender and the other occupants to evacuate the building.

"I ran down along with my family; our hands were up in the air and we were shouting that we were ordinary citizens who had nothing to do with terrorism." Abu Yousuf, a Sudanese tenant in the same building, also managed to escape with his family and took them to a relative's nearby house.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Al-Turki ruled out any connection between an American security warning last week and the incident in Jeddah. "Security operations have been ongoing since terror cells were first discovered in 2003," he said, adding that the security forces had raided the site acting on "instant information" concerning the whereabouts of a wanted militant.

The clash was the first major incident since January 9 when four wanted militants were killed in a shootout with security forces in a desert area of the Kingdom.

An estimated 100 security men surrounded the apartment building shortly after Fajr (dawn) prayers, then raided a flat that contained at least two alleged militants. One man was taken into custody on a security-related matter.

A source from King Fahd Hospital, where most of injured men were being treated, said the hospital received 16 wounded people, 14 of them security forces. Two were discharged immediately and two were in surgery late Sunday. The remaining wounded were listed in stable condition.

The raid occurred after intelligence information that a wanted militant was hiding in a residential building was received, said an official who asked for anonymity. The suspect was observed by the police since he left Rabigh until he reached Jeddah.

Security forces surrounded the building in an attempt to capture the suspects alive following calls to surrender. But he said the suspects started shooting, forcing lawmen to exchange fire with them.

Turki declined to reveal the names of neither the captured suspected militant nor the killed one. But a source, who also asked for anonymity, said their names are Ibrahim and Saad Al-Youbi Al-Harbi respectively.

A source from the Ministry of Interior said that two other men were arrested in the same apartment. The arrested men were identified by a source as the suspected militant s brother and uncle.

Earlier this month, Saudi officials said they have detained 700 terror suspects including 18 of the 26 most-wanted men in the Kingdom. Numerous suspects also have been killed in the different raids and clashes.

Prince Ahmad Ibn Abdul Aziz Deputy Minister of the Interior said the injuries inflicted on security men were minor. On the link between warning issued by the US embassy to its citizens and terrorists attacks that follows, Prince Ahmad said we did not receive information from the US Embassy but we provide them with information. On the level of co-ordination with the American Embassy Prince Ahmad said we have full co-ordination and they routinely warn their citizens.

Prince Mishaal Ibn Majed Ibn Abdul Aziz, the Governor of Jeddah visited at King Fahd Hospital security men injured in a confrontation with a number of wanted suspects of the deviant group at a residential building in Jeddah.

In a press statement, Prince Mishaal praised the national role played by security men committed to serving their religion, the King and the homeland.

Prince Mishaal was accompanied by a number of officials.

On the other hand Saudi security forces have arrested 18 terror suspects in a sweep of the northern town of Zulfi, according to Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Mansour Al-Turki.

He said the suspects, 17 Saudis and one Afghan, were arrested in a 24-hour search, which began last Wednesday night and ended at dusk on Thursday in Zulfi, about 280 km north of Riyadh.

Al-Jazirah Arabic daily said the detained men were members of the "deviant group," a phrase used by the government to describe Al-Qaeda militants.

"Police found three children during the raid and handed them over to their relatives," Turki said without mentioning their relation with the detained suspects. The raid covered a number of rest houses in the town, Asharq Al-Awsat reported.

The raids were linked to incidents in January when security forces killed four wanted men in clashes north of the town. The four slain terrorists included Muhammad Abdul Rahman Al-Farraj, Mishaal Obaid Al-Hasry, Omar Ibn Abdullah Al-Qahtani. The identity of the fourth was not known.

Farraj had helped terrorists in recruiting militants and transporting explosives, Asharq Al-Awsat said, adding that he had also taken part in the attack on security officers that took place on Jan. 29, 2004 while they were searching the house of Khaled Al-Farraj, one of the most wanted terrorists.

Hasry was involved in attacks on highway police in Qasim while Qahtani was accused of giving refuge to terrorists and facilitating a number of terrorist operations in the country, the Arabic daily said.

He had provided shelter to Faris Al-Zahrani, one of the 26 wanted terrorists, who was arrested in Abha on Aug. 5, 2004.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been carrying out a national public awareness and education campaign as part of its strategy to combat extremism. This program, initiated with the Counter-Terrorism International Conference held in Riyadh from February 5-8, 2005, features advertisements on television, radio and billboards, as well as programs on television, in schools and mosques, and at sporting events. Its objective is to educate Saudi citizens about the true values of the Islamic faith and the importance of tolerance and moderation.

"The campaign will help educate our public, especially our young people, about the dangers of extremism and terrorism," said Adel Al-Jubeir, Foreign Affairs Advisor to Crown Prince Abdullah Ibn Abdul Aziz.

The campaign, conducted over several weeks, has as one of its center pieces a series of public service advertisements that have been airing up to 25 times a day on a number of Arabic satellite networks including Al-Arabiya, MBC and Future Television, as well as on Saudi TV channels.

The size and scope of this campaign is unprecedented. Six government ministries are coordinating the development and execution of the programs. The Ministry of Education, for example, is sponsoring lectures at public schools that promote moderation, tolerance and peace and point out the dangers of extremism.

"The bottom line is that no Saudi citizen will be able to escape the clear message that intolerance, violence and extremism are not part of our Islamic faith or Saudi culture or traditions," remarked Al-Jubeir. "We are using different forms of communication to send a clear and powerful message, and we are taking serious actions to undermine the strength of those that try to misguide our young people."

In his opening remarks Adel Al-Jubeir said during the last several years the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in cooperation with our global partners, has been engaged in a program to eradicate the roots of terrorism. This effort is being conducted on three fronts simultaneously: We have gone after terrorists, those who support them, and those who condone their actions.

First, we have gone after the terrorists. We have pursued them relentlessly, killing or capturing their leaders, seizing their weapons, uncovering their arms caches. We have over 700 terrorist suspects in custody and have severely diminished the terrorists' will and capability to attack inside Saudi Arabia. Of the 26 most-wanted terrorists in Saudi Arabia, 18 have been captured or killed. But we still have a long way to go to eliminate this scourge from our midst.

We have beefed up our security forces, we have acquired new methods and technologies to track and pursue terrorist cells, and we have increased international cooperation to unprecedented levels.

No one can doubt the tenacity of our hunt for the terrorists or our effectiveness in bringing them to justice.

Second, we have gone after the financial support for terrorism. We have made great efforts to identify and shut down the financial sources that may support terrorism. We have enacted world class financial controls and have implemented the 40 recommendations on money laundering and 8 recommendations on terror financing of the Financial Action Task Force of the G-8. The controls and mechanisms Saudi Arabia has enacted are among the strictest in the world.

These restrictions include effective new controls on charities, recognizing that charitable giving is a central tenet of our faith and an important part of Saudi culture. Today, no Saudi charity can send any funds abroad without government oversight and control. I doubt that any country has come close to this kind of regulation.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Saudi Arabia has taken steps to combat the mindset that instills and justifies acts of terror, hatred and violence. Islam is a religion of peace, benevolence and tolerance, and we will not allow deviants to corrupt our faith. We are revitalizing our educational system to instill the true values of our faith: compassion, moderation, love and peace, while improving critical thinking. In our mosques, imams who have preached hatred and violence have been taken to task. An example has been set, and our religious scholars are working to bring those who have deviated back to the peaceful and tolerant precepts of Islam.

As a part of the effort to change the mindset, I would like to introduce to you another step in our campaign against extremism.

As a means to clearly communicate our message of tolerance and peace, Saudi Arabia has been carrying out an unprecedented public service campaign inside our own country designed to educate and inform the Saudi people about the evils and effects of terrorism and extremism.

The campaign includes public service announcements, special television programming and in-school education programs. This campaign began with the hosting of the Counter-Terrorism International Conference that took place in Riyadh from February 5-8, and continues as we speak.

For example, over a two-week period, schools and mosques in the Kingdom are devoting time to lectures promoting moderation and tolerance, and highlighting the evils of terrorism.

The size and scope of this campaign is unprecedented. These messages are being displayed on billboards, ATMs, local advertisements and television.

The advertisements, all of which are in Arabic, foster concepts to destroy the mindset of hate and violence and appeal to the values that all Saudis share, to work for a better society without extremism. These ads are being shown on a number of Arabic satellite networks including Al-Arabiya, MBC and Future Television, as well as on Saudi TV channels.

The bottom line is that no Saudi citizen will be able to escape the clear message that intolerance, violence and extremism are not part of our Islamic faith or Saudi culture or traditions.

In his Friday sermon, Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al Sudais, Imam of the Holy Mosque in Makkah welcomed the reforms taking place in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and warned of opportunists who take advantage of the campaign for personal reasons. Sheikh Al Sudais mentioned the importance of reforms on the bases of Shourah which was known well before modern democracy.

Meanwhile Yemeni security sources report Yemen has handed over to Sudan an al-Qaida suspect in line with a security agreement between the two countries.

The Yemeni Rai News quoted an unidentified security source Saturday as saying the Sudanese suspect was arrested while trying to enter the country across an unspecified border.

He said that officials received a request from Khartoum to arrest the suspect if he was in Yemeni territory, adding the unidentified suspect was allegedly planning to carry out terrorist acts in Sudan against official and foreign interests.

Yemen said March 2 it arrested members of a terrorist cell affiliated with al-Qaida plotting to strike Western targets in the country. They were apprehended in Sanaa and the southern port city of Aden.

On the other hand Yemeni authorities will hand over a wanted Jordanian who was arrested last February when smuggling Yemeni antiquities.

In cooperation with the administration of protecting antiquities, Yemeni police had managed to arrest five-member gang active in smuggling Yemeni antiquities.

According to 26 September weekly, police seized an amount of golden statues and other antiquities with in possession of the gang.

Colonel Hisham al-Ghazali, director of the interior ministry's counter-terrorism department told the paper that the arrest came within efforts of the ministry to combat smuggling antiquities, adding that the gang was headed by a Jordanian citizen called Samir Jadallah.

In collaboration with the General Antiquities Authority, police have caught the gang of five people led by a Jordanian national who had possession of large quantities of gold, statues and other rare antiquities, allegedly with the intention of selling them abroad.

Colonel Hisham al-Ghazali, General Manager for Combating Terrorism and Crime Department at the Ministry of Interior, was quoted by the September 26 weekly, which published the case as saying "the gang, led by a Jordanian national named Samir Jadallah, was seized after extensive efforts stepped up so far to fight antiquities trafficking, the gang included a Yemeni national from al-Jawf who was also caught on the charge of selling antiquities to foreigners."

Al Ghazali added that the suspect confessed that he collects antiquities and sell them to foreigners, the most prominent of whom was Samir Humadi, a Palestinian who holds Jordanian citizenship and has been residing in Yemen for several years.

Antiquities Protection Authority Manager, Hashim al-Thawr, said to September 26 Newspaper "the seized antiquities exceeded 30 gold pieces weighing one kilogram and they are rare articles including earrings, jewels and ornaments dating back to the Abbasi and Himiari eras."

"The seized antiquities included large quantities of the pearls, precious stones, jewels and bronze statues," he added. "The gangster confessed during investigations that he has been, for a long time, smuggling Yemeni antiquities to a number of world countries through the UAE, Jordan and Syria, and the sale process takes place with the aid of specialized international gangs."

It is alleged that the man has been carrying out exploration operations in some of the ancient sites with the aid of many Yemeni nationals. He has been using modern devices, some of which not even available at the General Authority for Antiquities, Museums and Scriptures.

Al-Ghazali mentioned that the five suspects are still being investigated and pointed out that some other suspects have also been caught.

On the other hand Yemen's Prime Minister said his country has practically won its war on Al-Qaeda terror.

"Everything is under control. Not 100 percent, but I can say we are around 90 percent in control," Prime Minister Abdel Kader Bajammal said.

"Yemen is an active partner in the fight against terror." the Prime Minister announced.

"The leadership of the Al-Qaeda network has been, if not destroyed, certainly severely damaged. It's hard for them to get money, to conduct operations," he said, adding that Yemen was "a safer place today."

Yemen has in fact been free of terror attacks since an explosives-laden boat rammed the French oil tanker Limburg as it prepared to enter Ash-Shir port off its southeastern coast in October 2002, killing one Bulgarian crew member and wounding 12 others.

The attack was virtually a repeat of the bombing of the US navy destroyer Cole in Aden port two years earlier which killed 17 American sailors.

"We had no coastguard at the time," Bajammal explained. "That's why we asked the Americans to help us in this field."

The Yemeni official said that while the government was using the stick, it was also trying to "reform those who can be reformed" - meaning those still in the stage of hatching plots - through a "dialogue" conducted by a commission comprising some 30 Muslim scholars and headed by a judge.

More than 210 detainees "who changed course" have been released since the initiative was launched 18 months ago, he said.

Meanwhile Experts from around the world examined terrorism's wide-reaching effects on the second day of an international conference in Madrid that has already questioned the US "war on terror".

The symposium, gathered 200 current and former leaders, government officials and experts for three days of discussions and working groups aimed at boosting international cooperation against terrorism.

It was followed with solemn ceremonies marking the first anniversary of one of the worst terrorist attacks in Europe -- the March 11, 2004 train bombings in Madrid, which killed 191 people and wounded 1,900.

But although much attention was being given to the causes of terrorism and how to use democratic principles to combat it, several of the participants accused the United States of exacerbating the threat by using military force and curbing civil liberties.

Jerrold Post, a professor of psychiatry and international affairs at George Washington University, said US President George W. Bush's administration may have unwittingly played into extremists' hands.

"Most strong counter-terror attacks are for ensuring domestic voters that something is being done," he said. "But there is usually an increase in terrorism afterwards."

He added: "It is terribly important that the state does not descend to the level of terrorists, or they have won. When the state abandons the moral high ground, the possibility for terrorism increases."

Mark Juergensmeyer, the director of international studies at the University of California said the US practice of keeping hundreds of terrorism suspects in indefinite detention in a military base in Guantanamo Bay without being charged worsened the threat.

"We have the Guantanamo effect. That is dealing with terror in such a way that it has an incubator effect. One has to examine the penal system's role in creating more terrorism," Juergensmeyer said.

Former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who heads the Club of Madrid grouping 44 ex-leaders which organised the conference, did not mention the United States by name, but stressed that countermeasures should not breach international law.

"I don't think we can say the end justifies the means. We can resort to force if necessary but we must strictly adhere to international law and respect human rights," he said Tuesday.

Meanwhile Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is key to the wider issue of global peace and security, but mistrust of the United States is hamstringing the process in the Arab world, the conference on tackling terrorism in Madrid heard.

Experts from more than 50 countries were attending the conference, which saw the issue of the Middle East take center stage, with Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and Israel's former Mossad head, Efraim Halevy, jousting over the issue.

Erekat insisted the existing "road map" for peace had to be a prelude to a wider settlement.

"Let's get to the endgame. All issues are doable," Erekat said.

"But don't tie my hands, tie my legs, throw me to the sea and ask me to swim," he pleaded, adding that the unilateral nature of the decision by the Israeli government to leave Gaza had "changed negotiations to dictation." Erekat said as long as the Israeli occupation existed, regardless of the impending withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Palestinians would feel excluded and humiliated.

He added that the United States should look beyond Gaza if it wanted to see a real Israel-Palestinian settlement.

"I hope President [George W.] Bush will find it in his heart to say Gaza is the end of phase one of the road map," he said.

"I have a 17-year-old boy, Ali," he said. "I don't want him to become a suicide bomber."

Erekat argued that Israel causes the violence by denying Palestinians their homeland, economy and dignity.

In response, Halevy, now head of the Center for Strategic and Political Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said: "We must make sure that terrorism does not dictate the political agenda. Once the genie was out of the bottle it was no longer possible to control it."

The moderator of the panel they were on, Rob Malley, director of a U.S. Middle East think tank, suggested that while the United States wanted to foster Arab democracy generally, it had an image problem.

He warned that terrorism and democracy could progress simultaneously in theatres such as Iraq and it was up to Washington to prove it could be even-handed in the region.

Malley concluded that the United States "has to be seen as acting not in self interest but for the good of the Arabs."

On the sidelines of the conference, the Arab League and Spain agreed to increase cooperation in fighting terrorism by creating a system for exchanging information.

After talks with Arab League chief Amr Moussa, Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso said that good intelligence was crucial for fighting terrorism and that Madrid and the Arab League were to encourage "a more fluid exchange of information."