Friends and enemies in Saudi Arabia
From Brian Todd
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a bold, chilling claim posted on an Islamist Web site, terrorists linked to al Qaeda say sympathizers within the Saudi security forces helped them kidnap American Paul Johnson.
The Saudis have been emphatic in their response.
"The notion that our security services are infiltrated by the terrorists really doesn't hold. If that were the case, they would not be going after soft targets, they would be going after government installations. We haven't seen that," says Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign policy adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah.
But it's long been suspected that al Qaeda has allies within the Saudi Interior Ministry, which oversees all domestic security forces.
"It's already the biggest open secret in the country, that there are sympathizers there," says CNN Military Intelligence Analyst Ken Robinson.
Robinson says many younger Saudi police officers have ideological attachments to Osama bin Laden.
But how far that alleged support travels up the Saudi food chain is an open question.
Some experts say the Interior Minister himself, Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz al-Saud, a prominent member of the royal family, has long been a supporter of the radical, Wahabiist sect of Islam in Saudi Arabia, and has supported Palestinian charities found to have funneled money to terrorist groups.
At the very least, those experts say, the Interior Ministry has often looked the other way regarding al Qaeda.
"The Saudis have been exporting radical Islam through an infrastructure they've created in their own country. And this infrastructure has now come back to attack them," says Jonathan Schanzer of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
A Saudi spokesman contacted by CNN says it's "nonsense" to think Prince Nayef is at all complicit with al Qaeda. He says militants have in fact made several assassination attempts against the minister.
He also denies claims from intelligence analysts, that another agency, the Saudi Religious Police, known as the Mutawa'ah, has terrorist links.
The Bush administration treads carefully, acknowledging terrorists have impersonated Saudi police, but praising the overall effort against al Qaeda.
"I am pleased that the Saudi's are acting in such an aggressive way to get these killers and murders and to make it clear to them that they will not be successful in their terrorists activities in Saudi Arabia," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday.
One ominous development in this story: CNN has confirmed that the man named by al Qaeda as their new leader in Saudi Arabia is a former Saudi police prison guard. A Saudi official tells CNN they believe the man was fired about 10 years ago and has long been at the top of their most wanted list.
