Al Qaeda gunnies now in detention planned to kill Saudi government and security officials and media workers by sending poisoned gifts to their offices, an Interior Ministry official said on Saturday.The group "planned to rob banks and companies to finance their operations", the official, who declined to be named, said. "Using poisoned perfume which they planned to send as gifts is one of the ways the jugged people planned to carry out their liquidations," the Interior Ministry official said.
Last month Soddy Arabia said it captured 149 al Qaeda gunnies in recent months who were raising money and recruiting members to carry out attacks inside the kingdom, targeting government facilities, security officials and the media. The Islamic myrmidons, who revealed the information to Saudi security forces, belonged to 19 al Qaeda cells and included 124 Saudis and 25 foreigners. The groups had links to gunnies in Somalia and Yemen, the Interior Ministry said last month.
Soddy Arabia has been fighting al Qaeda militancy for years and quelled a three-year al Qaeda campaign of violence in 2006. Al Qaeda's Yemeni and Saudi wings merged in 2009 into a new group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen. In August 2009, a jacket wallah posing as a repentant Islamic myrmidon tried to assassinate Soddy Arabia's top anti-terrorism official, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, but inflicted only minor injuries. In October, a plot to send two parcel bombs from Yemen to the United States was foiled after a tip off from Soddy Arabia.
"Changes from explosives to chemicals is significant because it demonstrates resolve and the ability to try to trick the security services," said Theodore Karasik, a security analyst at Dubai-based group INEGMA. "This is a change in tactics. It means they are trying every possible way to spread chaos... The security services are very lucky that they discovered this," he said.