Al-Qaida Claims U.S. Slaying and Hostage

[Vance]

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Suspected militants killed an American in the Saudi capital on Saturday, shooting him in the back as he parked in his home garage, and the U.S. Embassy said it was searching for an American who was missing.


A purported al-Qaida statement posted on an Islamic Web site late Saturday claimed the terror group had killed one American and kidnapped another in Riyadh. It threatened to treat the captive as U.S. troops treated Iraqi prisoners.


The slaying and apparent abduction were the latest attacks in a campaign of anti-Western violence in the kingdom, believed by many to be aimed at driving out foreigners as a way to sabotage the vital Saudi oil sector.


The U.S. Embassy identified the dead man as Kenneth Scroggs — the third Westerner slain in the kingdom in a week. It did not identify the missing American but said it was working with Saudi officials to find him.


The al-Qaida statement showed a passport-size photo of a brown-haired man and a Lockheed Martin business card bearing the name Paul M. Johnson. It said he was born in 1955.


The mobile phone listed on the card was switched off, and a call to a second phone number was picked up by a voicemail message by a deep-voiced man who identified himself as Paul Johnson.


The statement said the terror group would deal with Johnson just as "the Americans dealt with our brothers in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib" — a reference to ****** and other alleged abuses of Iraqi and Muslim prisoners by U.S. troops.


The statement also said Johnson is one of four experts in Saudi Arabia working on developing Apache helicopter systems and that the American killed worked in the same industry. It did not identify the slain American but said he was killed at his house.


"Everybody knows that these helicopters are used by the Americans, their Zionist allies and the apostates to kill Muslims, terrorizing them and displacing them in Palestine, Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Iraq (news - web sites)," said the statement.


It said al-Qaida would release a videotape later to show Johnson's confessions and list its demands.


A Saudi security source told The Associated Press that Scroggs worked for Advanced Electronics Co., a Saudi firm whose Web site lists Lockheed Martin among its customers. The office number on Johnson's business card was for Advanced Electronics.


In Scroggs' neighborhood, the Malaz district of Riyadh, witnesses told AP that three militants first shot him in the back as he pulled his car into the garage. The militants then moved closer and fired more shots.


The statement was signed by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the same group that claimed responsibility for a shooting and hostage-taking spree in the eastern Saudi city of Khobar on May 29-30. The attack at the hub of the Saudi oil industry killed 22 people, mostly foreign workers.


An estimated 8.8 million foreigners work among 17 million Saudis in the kingdom, mostly in the oil sector, banking and other high-level businesses.


Militant attacks against Westerners, government targets and economic interests in the Saudi kingdom have surged in the past two months, despite a high-profile campaign against terrorists the government began after suicide bombings last year.


Crown Prince Abdullah, shown on Saudi television Saturday greeting visitors at a Riyadh palace, urged his guests to "inform me personally of anyone who has deviated from religion, attacked (it) or is an extremist."


"I pledge, God willing, ... that they (militants) will not slip away from the hand of justice," Abdullah said.





U.S. Ambassador James C. Oberwetter, in a statement reacting to Saturday's killing and other recent terrorist attacks, expressed his condolences to victim's families.

"Those Americans who choose to remain here should exercise the utmost caution as they go about their daily life," Oberwetter said.

"I applaud Saudi Arabia's determination to bring an end to terrorism in the kingdom," he added.

Speaking in London, Sheik Saleh bin Abdulaziz Al Sheik, the Saudi minister for Islamic affairs, said Saturday that despite the recent surge of attacks, terrorism in his country had not reached crisis proportions.

"If you look back through the efforts of the Saudi government in tackling terrorism, they have destroyed half of the terrorist force," Al Sheik told journalists at the Saudi embassy in London.

"Our assessment of the situation is that it is controllable, but because there are sleeping cells and because the terrorists live in a crowded area the Saudi forces do not want to hurt any of the local people," he said.

Terror experts have noted that the militants are using several tactics — including shootings and ambushes where the gunmen do not die — rather than limiting themselves to suicide bombings or swift attacks under the cover of darkness.

They are also trying to avoid killing Muslims. The death of several Muslims and Arabs in a November compound attack in Riyadh horrified many Muslims — something that could seriously affect recruiting efforts.

Experts say the terrorists want to create "a psychosis of terror" so foreigners will leave the country, the oil and defense sectors would suffer and the system would weaken.

On Tuesday, an American who worked for a U.S. defense contractor was shot and killed. Last Sunday, an Irish cameraman was killed and a British TV correspondent was critically wounded when fired on while filming in a neighborhood that is home to many Islamic militants.

The United States has urged all its citizens to leave the kingdom, and the British Foreign Office has advised Britons against all nonessential travel to Saudi Arabia.

Yeah...anyone who has any sympathy for these people anymore really needs to get their **** straightened out.

[Seraphim]

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20040613/capt.ny12606122358.saudi_american_killed_ny126.jpg

A passport-size photo of a brown haired man and a Lockheed Martin business card bearing the name Paul M. Johnson Jr., are shown on an Islamic Web site in this framegrab made from APTN video. The photo and business card were posted late Saturday June 12, 2004, on the Islamic Web site along with a purported al-Qaida statement which claimed the terror group had kidnapped one American man in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and killed another American. (AP Photo/APTN)

[seruriermarshal]

:(

Saudi Arabia so bad .

[seruriermarshal]

'We know something will happen again - and soon'


By Damien McElroy in Riyadh and David Wastell
(Filed: 13/06/2004)


The white saloon, its boot wide open, sits on a Riyadh highway in front of an American-owned hotel for two days. The hotel security staff gaze at it but take no action. The occupants of a police car drive by and ignore it.

In a city where nerves are on edge, it is a frightening spectacle - a suspect vehicle that the security forces haven't towed away. It confirms the fear of expatriates that Saudi security remains too lax to cope with the threat from Muslim fanatics determined to drive all infidels out of the kingdom.

"We're told that the penny has dropped, that the security forces are fully ready to protect us," says one British expatriate. "When you see things like this, you know something's going to happen again, soon."

Fear has gripped many expatriate workers in Saudi Arabia since groups linked to al-Qaeda launched a series of brutal attacks on Westerners last month.

The worst of them came two weeks ago when al-Qaeda gunmen, attempting to "clean" the country of non-Muslims, took scores of hostages and killed 22 people - all foreign workers - during a 25-hour rampage through a business complex and a residential compound in the oil city of Khobar. Three of the attackers escaped, apparently let out by security forces in return for the lives of a further 40 hostages.

Last week a BBC cameraman was shot dead as he filmed footage for a report about the fear among workers in the kingdom after the hostage-taking and other attacks in the country.

Anti-terrorist detectives from Scotland Yard have now flown to Saudi Arabia to investigate the shooting of Simon Cumbers, 36, and that of the BBC security correspondent, Frank Gardner, 42, who was critically injured in the incident.

On Radio 4's From our Own Correspondent, in his last dispatch before the shooting, Gardner reported on a memorial service for Michael Hamilton, the British banker whose body was dragged through the streets of Khobar during an attack that left 22 people dead.

"Bankers, diplomats, teachers and oil workers stood silently while tribute was paid to a man they had so often waved to in the street, only to hear he had been slaughtered," he reports.

"This is a country that thousands of Britons have made their home for years. Now, slowly, they are coming to terms with the fact that if the terrorist attacks on westerners continue, they may have to consider leaving Saudi Arabia before it is too late."

Two days later it was too late for Robert Jacobs, an American adviser to the National Guard. He was shot dead in his home.

Visitors to Saudi Arabia are warned not to move around without government protection, despite fears that some officials are colluding with extremists. The minder and driver who accompanied Gardner and Cumbers were arrested after investigators refused to rule out the theory that they tipped off the attackers.

For years, the Saudi government has invested heavily in weaponry, radar systems, barricades and trained manpower to prevent attacks on oil installations, refineries and pipelines.

By attacking places where foreigners gather instead, militants are hitting at the soft underbelly of a country that until now has relied on 100,000 Westerners and millions of guest workers from the developing world to sustain its economy.

Many expatriates linger on, barricaded inside the luxury compounds. Wages and bonuses remain a powerful attraction for engineers and managers liberated from taxes, mortgages and the other burdens of living in the West. Some complain that the rewards have become a compulsion with Saudi Arabian employers refusing to pay out on contracts that have not expired.

"I can't leave until December," says a Scottish banker working for a state-owned bank. "By then I'll have worked for four years and I'll get a 40 per cent bonus. I can't walk away from that."

Tim Lane, an Ulsterman who has been travelling to Saudi Arabia for 25 years, arrived in Riyadh last Thursday. This visit, he thinks, will be his last.

"I can't say I'm surprised about what has been happening. It's been growing for years. The young people are very anti-Western. There's a lot of resentment that the money hasn't been spread around. I came this week but if I had been due next week I'd probably have stayed at home; it's getting more dangerous all the time."

Others continue to live quietly in middle-class neighbourhoods alongside locals, hoping that there is still protection in relative anonymity. But security assumptions have been exposed as wishful thinking, and throughout the kingdom arrangements are being made to up sticks.

Norman Edwards, the principal of the British school in Damman, an oil town in the eastern quarter, is leaving next week, after seeing his pupil roll dwindle. "The recent Khobar attack was too much," he says.

On the internet, the militants, led by a veteran lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, Abdulaziz al-Muqrin, have vowed to drive all non-believers out of the birthplace of Islam, and thus trigger the downfall of a weakened Saudi royal family.

Many Saudis have warned for years that reform of the royal House of Saud is the only long-term antidote to deepening chaos. Prince Abdullah, the crown prince, has made hesitant attempts to kickstart reform with a series of national dialogues, but frequently diehards within the defence and security establishment have ordered the arrest of reformists who addressed the sessions.

"We cannot go just in the one direction of security and rely on the tribal base to sustain the system," says Sami Angawi, a prominent liberal based in Jeddah. "We are always trying to put out the fire, not to address the source."

Western leaders adopted a programme for democratising the Middle East at the G8 meeting in Georgia last week but were rebuffed by the Saudi government.

Its attitude dismays Mr Angawi, who fears the militants will succeed in further isolating the kingdom from the West. "Why should we be afraid of trying the direction of reform by seeking the help of those who are serious in helping us?" he says.

Saudi officials say that the first step to quelling the wave of terror is to neuter the religious appeal of the perpetrators of violence. A fatwa issued in the 12th century remains the religious justification used by Osama bin Laden's followers to wage jihad against the Western suburbanites who live there.

Dr Saleh al Shaikh, Saudi Arabia's minister of Islamic affairs, insists that there was almost no support for terrorism within the kingdom, and says many of those being hunted by the government in connection with the recent attacks were from abroad - including Yemenis and Moroccans. He told The Sunday Telegraph that anger at the Palestinian problem and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq had caused "a lot of hateful feelings in the Muslim world".

Al-Qaeda was exploiting this anger, he says. "But the action of killing foreigners in Saudi Arabia is completely rejected by the people here except for the few who represent this strand of thinking."

Such killing is against Islamic teaching, says Dr Al-Shaikh, 44, a religious academic and an authority in Shariah law. "These actions are crimes and are prohibited by the Koran. The Prophet himself, peace be upon him, urged us to give peace and security to those who come to our land, and whoever killed a person come to us will never enter paradise."

He says that since the 1970s Saudi religious scholars have preached against killing and hijacking, and continued to do so. However, extremists ignored them, preferring to listen to the more belligerent ****ouncements of Muslim leaders abroad.

Mullahs that sympathise with extremists are being replaced and plans are being prepared to reform the national curriculum. "We are taking out the elements which are not proper and replacing them with what is proper," says Dr Al-Shaikh. "Teachings that are against the West, that call for total hatred and encourage fear of others, are being replaced."

Yet, he says, the Saudi government feels it faces an uphill battle so long as the Palestinian problem is unresolved and "every day tens and scores of Muslims are killed".

When a group of Britons gathered at dusk for a barbecue in the Sudar Compound in Riyadh last week, the discussion quickly came round to the precautions they were taking to protect against attack.

Just getting into the compound is an arduous process, though the guards are poorly paid and not particularly diligent. One, a thin man with an ill-fitting uniform, slips a mirror on wheels under the car to check for explosives.

"You can't trust them," mutters Reg McDonald (not his real name), one of the residents. "They report on our movements. It's all for money, you know, but that's how it is."

Some of the residents feel compelled to take security matters into their own hands: one man secretly bought a revolver to keep under the mattress; three others have recently bought body armour and another keeps a club into which he has battered a line of four-inch nails.

Inside the gate, the dust of the desert and the smell of the souk are a distant memory. Instead, we are surrounded by the trappings of American-style suburban living.

Big cars sit on driveways. Birds flit from the trees and gardeners shuffle about on manicured lawns. There are few signs that children live here, other than the odd bicycle or abandoned toys.

A mosque overlooks Mr McDonald's wall in the compound. "I was in the pool last Friday when l heard them shouting about jihad during the prayers. I know things won't be right. They found photographs of the compound inside the mosque last year."

The house is built for a family of four but is as spartan as a bachelor pad, and Mr McDonald has stacked most of his belongings in piles, ready for a quick getaway. "This is the good life," Mr McDonald announces with a hollow laugh. "Paranoia by the pool."



From (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/06/13/wsaud13.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/06/13/ixportaltop.html)

[SeanAshi]

and now there is an American missing in Riyadh

[seruriermarshal]

and now there is an American missing in Riyadh

?

[SeanAshi]

Purported statement from terrorist group claims responsibility for shooting dead one American and kidnapping anotherFox News

[Marmot1]

Seems that way in which Israel is using AH-64 (assasination of leaders) pissed off islamists and now americans suffer from this...

[Red]

Al-Q seems to be changing their strategy,now they are going after softer targets,this is a smart move on their side.There will be a tipping point reached when these civilians will ask themselves if the risk of being hit by the bad guys is worth it.I think we will see an exodus of foreign workers from Saudi Arabia very soon.The saudi government i suspect is fighting a battle they cant win.Al-q seems to have captured the imagination of the local populace and people working in the saudi government.It is a sad situation

[SeanAshi]

Seems that way in which Israel is using AH-64 (assasination of leaders) pissed off islamists and now americans suffer from this...****'em..the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist. When will the Saudi Royals start using an iron fist? They are a target just as the United States and Israel are targets.

[usa320]

What this shows is desperation. They dont have the resources to pull of elaborate plots to attack the west anymore.

All they can do is kidnap and kill innocent, unarmed civilians in rather ungarded compounds.

It shows their desperation, but also their brutality.

[Red]

What this shows is desperation. They dont have the resources to pull of elaborate plots to attack the west anymore.

All they can do is kidnap and kill innocent, unarmed civilians in rather ungarded compounds.

It shows their desperation, but also their brutality.
I disagree,this does not show desperation.Rather they have adapted and shifted their tactics.The very attacks on this contractors in Saudi Arabia is an attack on the ability of the US to get the energy supply it needs cause if Al-Q succeds in getting enough of these contractors to leave there,the Saudi oil output will be severly affected.And that would lead to a series of events wich would cause the price of oil per barrel to rise

[usa320]

Theyve shifted their tactics indeed.

Out of desperation.

We will never see an elaborate attack similar to 9-11 again. They dont have the resources anymore. IF we do see attacks on the US again, it will be more similar to madrid.

Car bombings, possible even suicide bombings. Things of that nature. Methods that require little cash and even fewer people.

[Red]

Theyve shifted their tactics indeed.

Out of desperation.

We will never see an elaborate attack similar to 9-11 again. They dont have the resources anymore. IF we do see attacks on the US again, it will be more similar to madrid.

Car bombings, possible even suicide bombings. Things of that nature. Methods that require little cash and even fewer people.
Not out of desperation but they have shifted to somethings that works.To say that Al-Q is desperate is premature,they are still highly effective and like i said if they are able to pull this one off,it would be a big victory for them cause they can effectively kill two birds with one stone.

[seruriermarshal]

Seems that way in which Israel is using AH-64 (assasination of leaders) pissed off islamists and now americans suffer from this...

F**k AQ !

[Secret Squirrel]

Theyve shifted their tactics indeed.

Out of desperation.

We will never see an elaborate attack similar to 9-11 again. They dont have the resources anymore. IF we do see attacks on the US again, it will be more similar to madrid.

Car bombings, possible even suicide bombings. Things of that nature. Methods that require little cash and even fewer people.

Resources? A couple of guys who knew how to fly...what kind of resources did that take? desperation? maybe if you fart really hard you'll get your head out of your ass. Saudi Arabia is rather dependent on foreign labor, by attacking that labor pool, AQ is also attacking the oil industry in Saudi Arabia (thus in turn also attacking Saudi Arabia's natural-gas development). Honestly, why would AQ throw their people against a military machine when hurting the "teeth to tail" is more productive?

[n4292936]

Red, I dont think that anyone has necessarily changed tactics. Attacking soft targets has been AQ's MO for a long time now. It is the recourse of the politically desperate and militarily helpless to use Record's phrase. Sure they've attacked military targets but by and large soft targets (embassies, clubs, individuals)have been the mainstay of AQ's militancy since its inception.

[Secret Squirrel]

Red, I dont think that anyone has necessarily changed tactics. Attacking soft targets has been AQ's MO for a long time now. It is the recourse of the politically desperate and militarily helpless to use Record's phrase. Sure they've attacked military targets but by and large soft targets (embassies, clubs, individuals)have been the mainstay of AQ's militancy since its inception.

Of course AQ attacks soft targets. I'm sure, much like Bush's stance, "you're either with us or against us"; so anyone seen as an enemy and, in the view of AQ "infected with Americanism" or whatnot, is an enemy to them and therefore a (again in their view) "just target". But this isnt anything new, or desperate but rather its consistent with terrorism. You cant terrorism a military into leaving because the military doesnt decide when it will deploy or retreat.

[S'13]

Seems that way in which Israel is using AH-64 (assasination of leaders) pissed off islamists and now americans suffer from this...

What do the targeted killings of terrorists carried out by Israel have to do with this?!

As if the western influence in the Middle East and the U.S presence in the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan can't be the reason U.S civilians are been targeted in Arab states.
Terrorists will always try to come up with reasons for continuing the killing.

But hey, it's always better to make it look like Israel responsible, isn't it? :cantbeli: :bash: :roll: