Saudi diplomat: Kingdom hunting for al Qaeda
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Adel al-Jubeir, senior foreign policy adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A top Saudi diplomat vowed Friday that the kingdom is going all out to hunt down members of al Qaeda, the terrorist network that Saudi authorities have blamed for a deadly blast last week in the capital, Riyadh.
Chafing at criticism that the kingdom is soft on terrorism, Adel al-Jubeir, senior foreign policy adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, told reporters that "there should be no doubt in anybody's mind about our commitment to go after those murderers."
He said it is essential that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden "be captured and brought to justice."
"We will fight them with everything we have until we crush them. King Fahd has vowed to strike with an iron first. The crown prince has declared total war on them," al-Jubeir said.
"And our minister of interior recently said that the only language we will use to communicate with them is the language of the rifle and the sword."
The kingdom doesn't finance "so-called radical madrassas that people accuse us of funding," he said, referring to the network of schools.
The November 8 bombing killed 17 people and wounded 122 others at a housing compound near Riyadh's diplomatic quarter. The victims were mostly Arabs, according to Saudi authorities and residents of the neighborhood.
The U.S. Embassy and consulates closed the day of the bombing as a security precaution. They will reopen Saturday.
"We knew the timing. We knew an attack was coming" but couldn't determine what the target would be, al-Jubeir said.
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 We knew the timing. We knew an attack was coming. 
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-- Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi senior foreign policy adviser
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Al-Jubeir said the Saudis have been making strides in hunting down al Qaeda but said the "danger still persists" from the group. Al Qaeda is spread out over more than 50 countries in a decentralized fashion, with its power emanating from the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad movement in Egypt.
Saudi security has unraveled dozens of al Qaeda cells since the group's May 12 attack in Riyadh that killed 23 people. The cells have ranged from 10 to 20 people.
"We have made arrests of over 600 people. We have tightened our financial system to ensure that terrorists don't take advantage of the charity of our citizens," al-Jubeir said. "We have broken up dozens of al Qaeda cells in Saudi Arabia. We have destroyed weapons-making factories. We have captured incredible amounts of explosives."
The cells organized bomb-making factories and booby-trapped copies of the Koran, Islam's holy book, showing that the terror network is targeting Saudis, other Arabs and Muslims, he said.
Asked whether last week's strike mistakenly targeted the Arab complex because al Qaeda operatives thought it housed Americans, al-Jubeir said he didn't know. He said that theory might be true because Boeing Co. employees were housed there until five years ago.
He said last week's attack had the earmarks of the terror network.
"The way it was executed, the style, the explosives, al Qaeda has the motive," al-Jubeir said. "They have the foot soldiers. They have the cells. ... And they struck using fairly similar methods."
He said, "They attacked the compound from ... different locations ..., and then they drove the explosives-filled truck into the compound."
