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| Arabia |
| Over 100 Islamists held over threat to the Muscat Festival |
| 2005-01-27 |
| More than 100 people, including prominent academics, are being held in Oman following a wave of arrests earlier this month, relatives of the detainees said Thursday. "Several professors from the education and Islamic studies faculties of Sultan Qaboos University are among more than 100 people who were arrested on January 9," one family member confirmed. His account was corroborated by the testimony of relatives of other detainees. Family members said those arrested were followers of the Ibadi Muslim sect dominant in the small Gulf sultanate, not Sunni Muslims like Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his militants. Relatives said the security forces gave no reason for the arrests but added that they came amid rumours of a plot by Islamists to sabotage the Muscat Festival, a month-long shopping and cultural event which opened last Friday. Security forces had intercepted an arms shipment from neighbouring Yemen, bin Laden's ancestral homeland where US special forces have been operating against Sunni militants since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, family members said. But they strongly denied any link between their detained relatives and the arms shipment or Al-Qaeda. "We were astonished by father's arrest in his Muscat home at dawn on January 9," said Taleb al-Abri, son of Islamic studies professor Ali bin Hilal al-Abri. Taleb acknowledged that, like many Muslims, his father oppsed the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq but insisted his father had no connection to terrorist activity and no connection to Al-Qaeda. He said police had seized six computers as well as cameras from family homes in Muscat and in the Al-Hamra region southeast of the capital. The Saudi-owned daily Al-Hayat reported Wednesday that some 300 suspects, including "military officials", had been detained in a wave of arrests this month. It too said the crackdown followed an arms seizure near the Yemeni border. Sunni militants loyal to Al-Qaeda generally regard other Islamic sects as heretical. But last year, Yemeni security forces launched a months-long campaign in the northern mountains against a preacher from the Shiite Zaidi community, whom it accused of leading a radical anti-US uprising. Oman has largely been spared the Islamist unrest that has rocked neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Kuwait further north. But last September a Briton was wounded in a shooting in an upmarket residential district of Muscat. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |