Ministry: Qaida Suspects Arrested in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia arrested two suspected members of al-Qaida who may have been plotting against Western embassies in the Middle East, the interior ministry announced Thursday.
The two men, a Yemeni and a Chadian national, had contacts with the Yemeni branch of the terror network, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), state news agency SPA quoted ministry spokesman General Mansour al-Turki as saying.
The Chadian suspect had been expelled from Saudi Arabia but returned with a passport issued by another country, Turki added.
"The two suspects may have been implicated in the threats against Western embassies in the region," he said.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, at the heart of the security alert that has shut a number of U.S. and Western missions in Sanaa, the Middle East, Asia and Africa, is seen by Washington as the most active branch of the jihadist network.
It was formed in January 2009 as a merger of the Yemeni and Saudi branches of al-Qaida and is led by Nasser al-Wuhayshi.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal citing an anonymous U.S. official, Wuhayshi masterminded the plot.
Previous reports have said that he was ordered to go on the offensive by al-Qaida's overall leader, the late Osama Bin Laden's former number two Ayman al-Zawahiri.
But the official who briefed the Journal said that an intercepted communication had shown that Zawahiri merely approved an operation that had been drawn up in Yemen.
"Zawahiri's giving his blessing for a plot is very different from ordering that plot or being able to launch a 9/11-style attack," the official said, according to the report.
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