Saudi Arabia must "release immediately and unconditionally six Saudis" held for nearly a year in connection with a protest that only one of them attended, Amnesty International said on Friday.

The London-based rights group said five of the men were being held without trial in connection with Saudi Arabia's "Day of Rage" protest which was planned for March 11, 2011.

Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom's veteran internal security czar, arrived in the U.S. city of Cleveland on Friday for scheduled medical tests, the royal palace announced in Riyadh.

"The crown prince, (who is also) deputy prime minister and interior minister, arrived in Cleveland from Morocco for medical examinations that had been previously scheduled," the palace said in a brief statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

China said Friday it is sending an envoy to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and France to explain its position on Syria, after Beijing called for an end to the year-long conflict in the Middle East country.

China unveiled a six-point peace plan last Sunday, calling for an immediate end to the bloody violence and for dialogue between the regime of President Bashar Assad and the opposition.

Egypt's Foreign Minister Mohammed Amr on Thursday warned of regional consequences should the crisis in Syria "explode", during talks with U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria Kofi Annan, his spokesman said.

Amr said that an "explosion" of the situation in Syria "would not only have internal consequences but will spread to the whole region," Amr Roshdy told reporters.

Sweden has in secret been helping Saudi Arabia plan the construction of an arms factory to produce anti-tank missiles, public broadcaster Swedish Radio reported Tuesday.

The Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI) has helped Saudi Arabia since 2007, though construction on "Project Simoom" has yet to begin, the radio said citing hundreds of classified documents and interviews with key players.

A Saudi Arabian diplomat was shot in the chest and died in the Bangladesh capital in the early hours of Tuesday, the deputy commissioner of Dhaka police told Agence France Presse.

Police found Khalaf Al Ali at an intersection just two buildings away from his residence in the city's upmarket Gulshan district and rushed him to a hospital where he died three hours later, Lutful Kabir said.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on Sunday urged Moscow to "advise" its ally Syria to stop its deadly crackdown against dissent.

"Unfortunately, international efforts have failed and we have not seen results to stop the bloodshed and massacres in Syria," he told a news conference in the Saudi capital.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri denied on Saturday that he had bought a 7-million-euro apartment in Paris for a Saudi official working in the Royal Diwan.

The report of al-Akhbar daily is a fabrication, Hariri’s press office said.

Relatives of people killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States Friday welcomed moves by two former senators to link Saudi Arabia to the events as part of a huge lawsuit.

Ex-Florida senator Bob Graham and former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey said in sworn affidavits to a New York court they were certain of the links between the Saudi government and the attacks.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati said Thursday that political and security stability is the basis for the success of his government’s economic plan and vowed to announce more projects.

At the opening of the Saudi-Lebanese Economic Forum at the Phoenicia hotel in Beirut, Miqati said: “Our government has announced and will announce more economic steps to improve the investment environment and attract Arab investments.”