Saudi Arabia has broken up a "major terrorist network" by arresting 62 militants with alleged links to terrorists in Yemen and Syria who are suspected of plotting attacks against government installations and foreign interests, the state news agency reported Tuesday.
According to the Associated Press, a Palestinian, a Yemeni and a Pakistani are three foreigners among the group of 59 Saudis arrested, the official Saudi Press Agency quoted Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said.
Thirty-five Saudi nationals who had previously been detained on terrorist-related allegations and freed have also been arrested, authorities in Riyadh said.
"He said the security authorities have been monitoring the group for months through the Internet," the AP reported. "During their investigation and subsequent arrests, they discovered a workshop for making advanced electronic circuits used in the detonation of bombs, communication surveillance tools and equipment for forging official documents, he said."
Members of the organization have "links with extremist elements in Syria and Yemen," the ministry said. According to the Guardian, authorities were still hunting for 44 others.
The Saudi organization had made direct contact with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis), an al-Qaida linked jihadi group that is fighting the Syrian government and other rebel groups, al-Turki told reporters.
The group had been targeting Saudi "government and foreign interests" and had planned "large-scale assassinations," al-Turki said. Due to close monitoring by Saudi intelligence, the arrests were facilitated by "suspicious activities on social networks."
"Elements of al-Qaida in Yemen were communicating with their counterpart elements in Syria in coordination with a number of misguided [people] at home in various provinces of the kingdom," al-Turki added.
According to the Guardian, "The announcement comes against a background of growing anxiety in the conservative kingdom about the risk of "blowback" from jihadi groups fighting in Syria, despite enthusiastic Saudi government and private financial and logistical support for the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad."
