AFP/Hassan Ammar - Saudi police arrest eight people in the northwest suspected of recruiting young people to join the Islamic State jihadist group in Iraq and Syria, the interior ministry say
A
court in Riyadh has sentenced an Al-Qaeda member to death for the 2004
kidnap and murder of US citizen Paul Marshall, local media reported on
Tuesday.
The court specialising in terror cases also imposed jail terms of
four to 30 years on 13 co-defendants, including two Syrians who were
members of the same Al-Qaeda cell, in a verdict announced on Monday
evening.
Johnson was kidnapped by Al-Qaeda in Riyadh in 2004, held hostage and
beaten to death, then beheaded by his kidnappers who posted a video of
his execution on the Internet, Ashaq Al-Awsat reported, citing the
indictment.
The 14 defendants belonged to a 50-member Al-Qaeda cell that is
alleged to have murdered the American, been involved in an attack on
Riyadh police headquarters and to have planned strikes on the US and
British embassies in the Saudi capital, official SPA news agency
reported.
They were also convicted of smuggling in heavy weapons from Iraq,
launching armed attacks on police, belonging to Al-Qaeda and showing
disrespect to Saudi rulers, the news agency said.
The court is expected to give a verdict in the next few days on the other members of the cell.
Saudi courts began in June 2011 to pass sentence on hundreds of
people accused of involvement in bloody Al-Qaeda attacks across the Gulf
kingdom from 2003 to 2006.
The government launched a relentless crackdown on the extremist
network, including a campaign of arrests, to wipe out the local Al-Qaeda
branch.
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