News / Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia detains over 30 'terror' suspects

Sunday, 31 January 2016 2:34 PM [ Last Update: Sunday, 31 January 2016 2:35 PM ]

Members of the Saudi special police unit march during a military parade in the Holy city of Mecca on September 17, 2015. (AFP photo)

Saudi authorities have rounded up more than 30 "terror" suspects, including nine American citizens, from different parts of the country over the past days.

At least 33 suspects, members of six cells, were detained in a series of separate "pre-emptive" raids across the kingdom over the past week, the Saudi Gazette newspaper reported on Sunday citing an unidentified source.

The paper added that the detainees included 14 Saudis, nine Americans, three Yemenis, two Syrians, an Indonesian, a Filipino, an Emirati, a Kazakhstan national and a Palestinian citizen.

The paper did not say if any of the "terror suspects" was linked to the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group, which has claimed several deadly attacks in Saudi Arabia’s Shia-majority Eastern Province.

At least four people were killed and 18 wounded in the latest attack, which targeted the Imam Reza Mosque in the town of Mahasen in al-Ahsa on Friday. There was no early claim of responsibility for the attack but it resembled previous assaults by Daesh terrorist group.

The repetition of terrorist attacks on mosques and religious centers in eastern Saudi Arabia has sparked anger among the local population. They accuse Saudi security forces of negligence in fulfilling their responsibilities to provide security for people against attacks by terrorists.

This as Saudi authorities have beheaded several opposition figures and dissidents in recent months. In the most recent case, Saudi Arabia executed on January 2 Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in defiance of international calls for the release of the prominent cleric and other jailed political dissidents in the kingdom.

Saudi police officers gather around debris following a blast inside a Shia mosque in Qatif on May 22, 2015. (AFP)

Towns and cities in the Shia-dominated Eastern Province have been the site of peaceful demonstrations since February 2011. People have been voicing their protest at Riyadh’s suppressive policies against the country’s Shia minority.

Saudi Arabia has time and again been accused of aiding, abetting and arming militant groups operating across Iraq, Syria and several other countries.

Chris Murphy, a top American senator, said in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, a top American think-tank, in New York on Friday that Saudi Arabia has been funding some 24,000 madrassas (religious schools) in Pakistan through an unleashed “tsunami of money” in order to “export intolerance.”

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir