Thursday, August 08, 2013

Recent terror alert likely had Saudi angle

The general focus of the explanation for the recent terrorism alert in the Middle East has been on something that may have been in the works in Yemen, although there are elements of this that sound either preposterous on its face (e.g. a supposed SPECTRE-style meeting of all Al Qaeda affiliates) or are subject to doubt even by some of the governments involved.

But now there is an intriguing news report from the Saudi Press Agency --

The security spokesman at the Ministry of the Interior said that the security authorities through monitoring and follow up of published messages of incitement and hatred through social networks managed at the beginning of the last ten days of the holy month of Ramadan to arrest two expatriates (a Chadian who was previously deported and returned with a passport of another state, and the other is a Yemeni.) The two recruited themselves for the service of deviant thought, as evidenced by their seized items which included computer hardware, electronic media and mobile phones and which indicated their communication with the deviant group abroad either by electronic encrypted messages or through identities via the social networks (such as Abu Alfidaa, Hspouy, Muawiya Almadani, Rasasah fi Qusasah, and Abu El Feda Aldokulai) so as to exchange information about impending suicide operations in the region. Their initial statements also supported this fact.

The "deviant group" is the standard terminology for Al Qaeda. Of course the statement is cagey, but it suggests that whatever information breakthrough took place over the last few weeks had as much to do with Saudi surveillance as any of the programs of the US National Security Agency.