One set of particularly lurid threats that caught the attention of U.S. intelligence last week related to two radical Saudi clerics who, intelligence officials believe, have “strong connections” to Al Qaeda, possibly including the cell that carried out the recent Riyadh attacks. U.S. officials say the two clerics, Sheiks Ali al-Khudayr and Ahmad al-Khalidi, were arrested by Saudi authorities in the post-bombing crackdown. After the bombings, the sheiks posted an Internet message ordering all good Muslims to refuse to cooperate with official investigations into the attacks.
The clerics had been under surveillance by Saudi authorities for months, but disappeared from view shortly before the United States attacked Iraq. What alarms U.S. intelligence is that Islamist Web sites and London-based jihad groups claim that the sheiks were killed during a raid last week on their hideout in the holy city of Medina. Omar Bakri Muhammad, a London cleric who supports the Saudi militants, told NEWSWEEK that eyewitnesses saw two bodies being carried on stretchers from the house and Saudi authorities have refused to tell the clerics’ families what happened. U.S. and Saudi officials strongly deny the sheiks were killed. But the allegation has resonated noisily in the world of the cyber-jihad: on an Internet bulletin board used by the 9-11 hijackers, someone purporting to be Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard last week said that bin Laden was “emotionally shaken” by news of the alleged Medina killings. The message said that if the sheiks’ deaths are confirmed, Al Qaeda would respond against the Saudi royal family with a “forceful statement that is dripping with blood,” according to a translation by terrorism expert Rita Katz. The message disappeared the next day.
U.S. officials say in the wake of the Riyadh attacks, Saudi authorities have changed their attitude toward Islamic terrorism. FBI investigators on the scene are elated at the level of cooperation, which includes allowing U.S. investigators to question suspects directly. But intelligence also indicates suspects in the Riyadh attacks may have escaped and could be heading to Europe or the United States. Pessimistic officials in Washington say even at “condition yellow,” the fragmentary picture that intelligence information paints of Qaeda activities still evokes uncanny echoes of what analysts saw in the weeks before 9-11.
