Terror suspects were taking orders from Yemeni Al Qaeda: Saudi Arabia

Washington, Mar. 26 (ANI): Saudi Arabia has confirmed that several of over 100 suspects who allegedly plotted terror attacks on key oil and security facilities in Saudi Arabia, were waiting for a go ahead from senior Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen to strike.

Fox News quoted Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman General Mansour Al-Turki as saying that the arrest of the alleged plotters not only had prevented the attacks, but broken up a network of Al Qaeda-affiliated radicals that included two suicide bombing cells.

"They were ready but waiting for an order which fortunately didn't come," he said of the militants.

While Al-Turki declined to identify which facilities the suspects were allegedly targeting, he said one of the suspects, a Saudi national, was employed by a private Saudi industrial security company responsible for protecting oil sites and other critical infrastructure.

"As an employee, he had access to all of those sites and to current plans for protecting them," he said.

He did not dispute news reports indicating that the plotters had been exchanging e-mails with a man in Yemen believed to be a senior leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.ccording to reports, members of the two suicide cells had been exchanging coded e-mails about the planned strikes with a man in Yemen whom the accounts called "Abu Hajer."

One Saudi official said "Abu Hajer" is believed to be a nom de guerre for Said Al Shihri, a Saudi leader of AQAP.

He was released from the Guantanamo Bay detention center in December 2007 after being held there for six years, and he was taken to a Saudi rehabilitation center from which he disappeared. (ANI)