Saudi Suicide Bomber from Marib, Yemen
Update: Abdullah Hassan Aseeri, from Aseer in Saudi Arabia, Saudi origin and citizenship
JEDDAH // The suicide bomber who targeted Saudi Arabia’s deputy interior minister Prince Mohammed Bin Naif on Thursday had been based in an area of Yemen known to be a base for many al Qa’eda militants, Yemen’s foreign ministry said yesterday.
The fact that a militant was able to get into Saudi Arabia so easily and target a high-ranking politician and prince has added to fears in Riyadh that the current unrest in Yemen could pose problems in the conservative Gulf kingdom.
The suicide bomber had come from Mareb, east of Sana’a, Yemen’s foreign minister, Abu-Bakr al Qirbi, said. The foreign minister said the man claimed he wanted to hand himself over to Saudi authorities and urge other militants to turn their back on al Qa’eda.
Its not the unrest that is posing problems but the lack of the Yemeni government’s committment to battling al Qaeda. Of all the insurgencies the Yemeni regime is facing, including the southern separatists and northern rebellion, al Qaeda is the most manageable and the most beneficial.
With the Yemeni government is deploying terrorists in its war against Shiite rebels, as it has before, there is a little motivation to crackdown on the group. Note the Yemeni FM says Yemen knows that al Qaeda is based in Marib, but the government doesn’t attempt to engage them.
The Al Qaeda threat brings foreign aid from Saudi Arabia and the US to Yemeni President Saleh’s regime that other anti-government groups do not. Thus the southern protesters get shot on the street and the Yemeni military is currently bombing cities in the north, but al Qaeda gets a pass.
The Saudi/Yemeni border is difficult to control because much of the smuggling is accomplished by Yemen’s security forces.
Related: The recent arrest of 44 al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia shows the “Saudi AQ moved to Yemen” meme in a new light. I’m not questioning that there are Saudi AQ in Yemen, just the broader structure:
They are mostly aged from their late twenties to early sixties, the ministry said. He told Agence France-Presse: “These people have links to the original al Qa’eda organisation.
“These people, I would describe them like a base, they actually work in the area, recruiting young people, giving young people the ideology of al Qa’eda, and financing terrorism in the kingdom,” he added.
the Interior Ministry’s statement focused on the high academic qualifications obtained by the detainees, their experiences and mature ages, and this is evident in the positions they held. The statement mentioned that some of those suspects abused the trust that had been placed in them.
However, in my opinion, the most important issue that the statement tried to highlight was that those suspects did not only encourage and support [terrorism] but are in a more advanced stage of violent activity by religious groups; a stage in which there is experience and high-level qualifications. Some of them work as lecturers, some are established employees and others are businessmen.
