DUBAI (Al Arabiya)
A Saudi court tried 330 charged with involvement in al-Qaeda's violent 2003 campaign of attacks inside the country and sentenced one person to death, the justice ministry said on Wednesday.
State television said the rulings involved 330 suspects in 179 cases but did not give a breakdown of the sentences or specify how many were acquitted.
Sentences ranged from house arrest to imprisonment and, in one case, the death penalty. More than 1,500 suspects are to go on trial and the media are expected to be allowed to cover the appeals, a court official told Al Arabiya on condition of anonymity.
All those convicted will be able to appeal the decision, Dr. Mohammed Alnjami, a member of the Islamic Fiqh Academy in Riyadh, told Al Arabiya.
In the first of the long-awaited trials of 991 people charged after the Qaeda campaign, an unspecified number were convicted on charges including conspiring with al-Qaeda, plotting to disrupt national security and financing terrorism, the ministry said in a statement.
The accused include some clerics -- Nasser al-Fahd, Ali al-Khodeir and Faris al-Shuweil -- who had publicly backed the militants. Fahd and Khodeir appeared on Saudi state television after their arrests in 2003 to call for an end to the bloodshed.
Deadly attacks
Saudi former al-Qaeda militants play volleyball at a rehabilitation center for militants in RiyadhThe trials related to a series of attacks in Riyadh carried out between 2003 and 2006 that killed more than 120 people, including 74 members of the security forces and 90 civilians including foreign residents.
The group called al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula carried out suicide bombing at upscale compounds housing mostly European and American expatriates in Riyadh and at al-Mohaya compound, which housed mostly Arab expatriates west of Riyadh in 2003,
The trials also covered attacks on the interior ministry headquarters and other government offices in Riyadh and a failed attempt in 2006 to storm the world's biggest oil processing plant in eastern Saudi Arabia, the last militant operation of note.
Rahabilitation
Saudi Arabia has arrested hundreds of suspects over the last two years on suspicion of trying to revive militant cells and created a successful rehabillitation program.
The munasaha, Arabic for "advice," program in which the Saudi government enrolls repentant terrorists and returnees from Guantanamo or militant camps outside the kingdom has even been examined as a model for similar programs in the U.K. and Canada.
Alnjami said that Wednesday’s judicial ruling did not indicate that the government’s rehabilitation program for extremists and al-Qaeda suspects had failed. The vast majority have been rehabilitated only a minority had to stand trial, he added.
Those the suspects were tried according the Sharia law, and the fact that only one was sentenced to death, while others were acquitted or put under house arrest, demonstrated the independence of the Saudi judiciary, said Alnajami.
A Saudi court tried 330 charged with involvement in al-Qaeda's violent 2003 campaign of attacks inside the country and sentenced one person to death, the justice ministry said on Wednesday.
State television said the rulings involved 330 suspects in 179 cases but did not give a breakdown of the sentences or specify how many were acquitted.
Sentences ranged from house arrest to imprisonment and, in one case, the death penalty. More than 1,500 suspects are to go on trial and the media are expected to be allowed to cover the appeals, a court official told Al Arabiya on condition of anonymity.
All those convicted will be able to appeal the decision, Dr. Mohammed Alnjami, a member of the Islamic Fiqh Academy in Riyadh, told Al Arabiya.
In the first of the long-awaited trials of 991 people charged after the Qaeda campaign, an unspecified number were convicted on charges including conspiring with al-Qaeda, plotting to disrupt national security and financing terrorism, the ministry said in a statement.
The accused include some clerics -- Nasser al-Fahd, Ali al-Khodeir and Faris al-Shuweil -- who had publicly backed the militants. Fahd and Khodeir appeared on Saudi state television after their arrests in 2003 to call for an end to the bloodshed.
Deadly attacks
Saudi former al-Qaeda militants play volleyball at a rehabilitation center for militants in RiyadhThe trials related to a series of attacks in Riyadh carried out between 2003 and 2006 that killed more than 120 people, including 74 members of the security forces and 90 civilians including foreign residents.
The group called al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula carried out suicide bombing at upscale compounds housing mostly European and American expatriates in Riyadh and at al-Mohaya compound, which housed mostly Arab expatriates west of Riyadh in 2003,
The trials also covered attacks on the interior ministry headquarters and other government offices in Riyadh and a failed attempt in 2006 to storm the world's biggest oil processing plant in eastern Saudi Arabia, the last militant operation of note.
Rahabilitation
Saudi Arabia has arrested hundreds of suspects over the last two years on suspicion of trying to revive militant cells and created a successful rehabillitation program.
The munasaha, Arabic for "advice," program in which the Saudi government enrolls repentant terrorists and returnees from Guantanamo or militant camps outside the kingdom has even been examined as a model for similar programs in the U.K. and Canada.
Alnjami said that Wednesday’s judicial ruling did not indicate that the government’s rehabilitation program for extremists and al-Qaeda suspects had failed. The vast majority have been rehabilitated only a minority had to stand trial, he added.
Those the suspects were tried according the Sharia law, and the fact that only one was sentenced to death, while others were acquitted or put under house arrest, demonstrated the independence of the Saudi judiciary, said Alnajami.
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