Starting Points: Suicide attack

Showing posts with label Suicide attack. Show all posts

Apr 7, 2010

Alexander Tikhomirov's life illustrates challenge radical Islam poses in Russia

Image by doodledubz collective via Flickr

By Philip P. Pan
Wednesday, April 7, 2010; A08

MOSCOW -- He had been a bright but lonely child from a sleepy city near the Mongolian border, in a Buddhist region of Russia far from the nation's Muslim centers. But by the time he was killed last month, thousands of miles away in the volatile North Caucasus, Alexander Tikhomirov had become the face of an Islamist insurgency.

After two young women blew themselves up on the Moscow subway last week, killing 40 people in the city's worst terrorist attack in years, investigators said they suspected that Tikhomirov had recruited and trained them, and perhaps dozens of other suicide bombers.

How the schoolboy whom neighbors called Sascha became the tech-savvy militant known as Sayid Buryatsky remains a question wrapped in rumor and speculation. But the outline of Tikhomirov's journey from the Siberian steppes to the mountains of Chechnya provides a sense of the challenge that radical Islam poses in Russia and the speed with which the insurgency in the nation's southwest is changing.

In less than two years with the rebels, Tikhomirov became their most effective propagandist, drawing in young Muslims with his fluent Russian, colloquial interpretations of Islam and mastery of the Internet. When security forces gunned him down last month at age 27, the guerrillas immediately cast him as a martyr.

Even in death, he remains influential. The rebel leader Doku Umarov has vowed fresh attacks in the Russian heartland by the brigade of suicide bombers that Tikhomirov helped revive. And he remains a digital legend, with his writings and videos preserved on the Web and his DVDs sold outside mosques across the former Soviet Union.

Neighbors in Ulan Ude, capital of the Siberian province of Buryatia, remember Tikhomirov as an awkward boy from a troubled family. His father was Buryat, an ethnic minority related to Mongols, and died soon after he was born. His mother, said to be an ethnic Russian, struggled to make ends meet at a local market.

One resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of police scrutiny, said Tikhomirov's interest in Islam came after he was forced to drop out of high school and attend vocational school. Others traced it to a stepfather from the Caucasus.

But in a letter posted on a rebel Web site, Tikhomirov's mother said he was simply drawn in by a library copy of the Koran when he was 17. "That same year, he started to search for people who could tell him anything about Islam," she wrote.

Tikhomirov may have had an early brush with Islamic extremism and Russia's heavy-handed efforts to stamp it out. An Uzbek preacher named Bakhtiyar Umarov moved to his city about the time he converted, and Tikhomirov studied with him, acquaintances said. After Umarov caused a stir by trying to build a mosque, Russia deported the preacher to Uzbekistan, where he was jailed on charges of "terrorist propaganda." But his defenders insist that he is a moderate and could not have radicalized Tikhomirov.

In his late teens, Tikhomirov moved to Moscow, where he attended an Islamic college that the authorities later closed in a crackdown on suspected extremism. He then traveled to Cairo, where he studied Arabic and attended lectures by Muslim scholars, one of whom he cited years later to justify violence in the name of Islam.

In 2003, he returned to Moscow, telling friends that the Egyptian authorities had kicked him out for his religious activities. He took the Muslim name Sayid, calling himself Sayid Buryatsky.

But he seemed far from ready to join the rebels in the North Caucasus. Investigators say he took a job as a low-level assistant to the Russian Council of Muftis, which unites the nation's Muslim spiritual boards.

Suppressed by the czars and the Communists, Islam has enjoyed a fitful rebirth in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. Most of the nation's estimated 20 million Muslims are ethnic minorities who adhere to a moderate branch of the faith. But radical views have made inroads, fueled by foreign proselytizers and frustration with state-backed spiritual leaders.

Acquaintances say Tikhomirov embraced a movement known as Salafism, which argues that Islam has been corrupted over the centuries and urges a return to the stricter practices of the earliest Muslims. The movement is popular among young Muslims in Russia, but the security forces often target its adherents as extremists.

Russia's traditional Islamic leaders have tried to steer young people toward moderate views, but a severe shortage of mosques, due in part to state limits, has made that difficult. In Moscow, six mosques serve as many as 3 million believers, the largest Muslim population of any city in Europe.

Aslam Ezhaev, director of an Islamic publishing house, said Tikhomirov voiced frustration with Muslim officialdom and eventually returned to Buryatia, where he took a job as a warehouse guard and offered to translate Arabic books for him.

Ezhaev suggested that Tikhomirov start a podcast for his Web site, Radio Islam. Tikhomirov proved be a talented preacher; his lectures were an immediate hit.

Ezhaev said he opposed violence and forbade Tikhomirov to discuss jihad. "It was easy for him to stay within the limits," he said. "I didn't see any signs of fanaticism."

On the Web, radicals criticized Tikhomirov for refusing to talk about Russia's brutal efforts to crush the insurgency in the Caucasus, where rebels in 2007 declared jihad to establish an Islamist emirate.

In the spring of 2008, Tikhomirov received a recruitment video from a senior rebel commander. "I considered it probably three or five seconds," he recalled in a video of his own, then concluded that God was challenging him to back up his sermons with action.

Because of his mixed ethnicity, he quickly became a powerful symbol for an insurgency trying to expand beyond Chechnya to the rest of the Caucasus. His sermons, which he filmed in combat gear, weaved scripture with sarcasm, striking a chord in an impoverished Muslim region brimming with resentment against the security forces.

Tikhomirov called the screams of injured enemies "music for the ears" and detailed his central role in the campaign of suicide bombings that began last summer with the revival of Riyad-us Saliheen, a brigade that once staged attacks across Russia.

"While I am alive," he wrote in December, "I will do everything possible so that the ranks of Riyad-us Saliheen are broadened and new waves of mujaheddin go on to martyrdom operations."

On March 2, when security forces surrounded him and other fighters in a village in Ingushetia, Tikhomirov recorded a final sermon on his mobile phone, officials said. The authorities recovered the phone, along with a 50-liter barrel of explosives.

Apr 6, 2010

Global Voices Online » Russia: War Reporter Blogs on Trauma and Politics of the Subway Attacks

Posted By Veronica Khokhlova On 2010-04-06

^[1]

Flowers at Park Kultury subway station in Moscow - April 3, 2010 (image by Veronica Khokhlova)

Olga Allenova (LJ user allenova) is a special correspondent for the Kommersant daily, author of Chechnya is Close: War Through the Eyes of a Woman ^[2] (RUS), a collection of the 1999-2007 war reportage from Russia's North Caucasus region. In the blog post ^[3] (RUS) translated below, she writes about the March 29 subway bombings in Moscow ^[4] and the 2004 Beslan school siege ^[5], the subsequent pain and trauma, and the resulting political and media responses.

Today a friend of mine […] suddenly told me that she had been [avoiding subway and taking buses and other means of land public transportation] to work this whole past week. She works at [Kolomenskaya ^[6] subway station], and lives at [Rechnoy Vokzal ^[7]]. It takes her only 40 minutes to get from home to work. But since Tuesday, she's been leaving home two hours earlier - at 6 AM, that is - to be at the office by 9 AM.

I didn't get what she meant right away. That is, I could guess she was stressed out, like many other Muscovites, as a result of [last Monday's subway blasts]. But I didn't know her condition was that serious. And when I asked her why she was so sure something similar couldn't happen on [a bus], she started crying. And I suddenly realized that I had just told her a very cruel thing. The imaginary safety of land transportation was keeping her afloat, allowed her to continue going to work, to somehow plan her life. And now she was sobbing, saying this: “I can't live! I can't live! I can't descend into the subway! I can't look at the people!” And now I could understand her. I was in a similar state in 2004, in and after Beslan. Everything that used to give my life a sense of some universal justice had collapsed then. I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat or go out into the street. In front of my eyes stood black plastic bags, and the black women screaming above them. It's impossible to express this, the words that I'm writing now seem absurd. Even now I have a lump in my throat. I don't even remember how I got out of that. Many hours, weeks, I'd been talking to all kinds of people, friends, a priest, my husband, colleagues. It was then that I decided I wouldn't be seeing psychologists - they aren't of much help. They are just doing their job, staying outside - outside your pain.

Then a year passed, and I went to Beslan again. And again, there was this terrible hurt, and these symbols - white balloons over the school, white birds over the cemetery, an old woman saying tender words to a dove that chose to sit on her granddaughter's grave, children's faces on the cold gravestones, their teddy bears, their chocolates and cola. I'm a strong person, I know that. I've seen a lot in my 33 years. War, dirt, terrorist acts, corpses that no longer looked like people. I know that I've survived all that. But I know that deep inside I still haven't recovered from Beslan. I don't like to talk about it. I try not to think about it. Because when I do, I sob from despair, from fear. I sob because I still haven't understood why it happened. I sob the way my friend did today. She's just scared. There are many people like her now. People are scared to go inside subway. They are scared of women in headscarves, even though many of these women are Moscow natives. They are scared of their own fear. Fear is an enemy that destroys a person from within. If you are scared and you give up, the fear will take full hold of you. When I'm scared to go to the Caucasus, I realize that if I give in to fear and don't go once, I'll stop going there altogether - and I'll end up stuck at home, behind the closed doors, and I'll be scared even to pick up a phone. I know people to whom this happened.

I don't understand why they aren't discussing this problem on TV. Why there are no psychologists who would talk in prime time to people about the problems that are bothering them a lot. Not every person would agree to see a psychologist. Not everyone understands that it's a disease that requires treatment.

They'd tell me - what TV discussions do you expect when on the day of the attacks they didn't even air special newscasts on TV. I live in this country, so I'm not surprised. A year after Beslan, exactly on the anniversary, Moscow was celebrating its birthday. And when I wrote a text about it, outraged readers responded to me: “What, do you want us to forget our own birthdays, anniversaries, weddings?” My friend, by the way, was also celebrating her birthday on that day. And now she is sobbing from fear. It's just that at that time it all seemed too distant. And now it's very close. […] And I'm not surprised by how the federal channels were covering the subway attacks. If you remember Nord-Ost [theater hostage crisis of 2002 ^[8]] and the live broadcasts on [NTV ^[9]] - and what they did to NTV afterwards - it becomes clear that no live broadcasts are possible in this country under this regime. I'm not gonna get hysterical and scream about why the officials aren't showing me the truth - the way Beslan mothers did at one point. I simply despise this regime. I don't see them as authorities. For me, they are a cowardly bunch of people who couldn't even get out of the Beslan airport, but were sitting there, in the hastily set up headquarters (just in case, so that they could get out if the terrorists suddenly besiege the whole city) - at the time when the children were being shot at by tanks and grenade launchers. These same cowardly people were trying to convince the citizens whose relatives were taken hostage in the besieged Nord-Ost [theater]: “Colleagues! Calm down! All the terrorists are waiting for is for you to hold a rally on Red Square! We won't allow this!” A quote from [Valentina Matvienko ^[10]]. They, of course, couldn't allow such a blow to their image. A rally against the war in Chechnya, and right on Red Square. Against the sacred and on the sacred.

I don't expect anything from these people. I even understand why they disliked the publications in the media claiming that the Moscow attacks were acts of revenge for the Caucasus. [Boris Gryzlov] is very displeased with hearing all the time about the regime's cowardliness. And about the mistakes they had committed but wouldn't admit to. […]

But - again - this isn't what I wanted to say. I wanted to say that people need help. Professional psychological help as well as simple moral support from [family and friends]. If you have a friend who is scare to take subway, talk to him about it. Help him. Maybe you'll save him from trouble. We can only rely on ourselves, on our dear ones, on fellow citizens. Because there's no one else in this country that we can rely on.

Article printed from Global Voices Online: http://globalvoicesonline.org

URL to article: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/04/06/russia-war-reporter-blogs-on-trauma-and-politics-of-the-subway-attacks/

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/park-kultury.jpg

[2] Chechnya is Close: War Through the Eyes of a Woman: http://www.kommersant.ru/Library/books-authors.aspx?AuthorID=51

[3] the blog post: http://allenova.livejournal.com/3340.html

[4] the March 29 subway bombings in Moscow: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/04/05/russia-reflections-on-the-subway-bombings-and-politics/

[5] the 2004 Beslan school siege: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_hostage_crisis

[6] Kolomenskaya: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolomenskaya_%28Metro%29

[7] Rechnoy Vokzal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechnoy_Vokzal_%28Moscow_Metro%29

[8] theater hostage crisis of 2002: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis

[9] NTV: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTV_%28Russia%29

[10] Valentina Matvienko: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentina_Matviyenko

Apr 1, 2010

Chechen rebel leader asserts role in Moscow subway bombings - washingtonpost.com

Image via Wikipedia

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post staff writer
Thursday, April 1, 2010; A08

MOSCOW -- An Islamist rebel leader asserted responsibility Wednesday for the suicide bombings in the Moscow subway stations that killed 39 people two days earlier and threatened more attacks to avenge what he called atrocities ordered by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Russia's volatile southwest.

The video statement by the Chechen militant, Doku Umarov, was posted on the Internet hours after another double bombing killed at least 12 people in Dagestan, located east of Chechnya in the North Caucasus region, where the Kremlin has been battling a separatist insurgency.

"You Russians only see the war on television and hear about it on the radio, and this is why you are quiet and do not react to the atrocities that your bandit groups under Putin's command carry out in the Caucasus," Umarov said in the 4.5-minute video. "I promise you that the war will come to your streets, and you will feel it in your lives and under your skin."

Umarov, dressed in fatigues and sitting in what appeared to be a forest clearing, said he ordered the two subway bombings in retaliation for an anti-terrorism raid by security forces in February in which at least 20 people were killed, asserting that officers used knives to execute innocent, impoverished villagers.

Umarov said he could only grin when accused of terrorism because he has not heard people condemn Putin for such crimes, and he pledged new attacks on Russians "who send their gangs to the Caucasus and support their security services that carry out massacres."

There was no government response, but Chechnya's representative in the Kremlin-controlled parliament dismissed the threat. "It doesn't matter that he has claimed responsibility for those bestial murders," Ziyad Sabsabi told the Interfax news agency. "In any case, his days are numbered."

Russian forces have tried for years to capture or kill Umarov, who declared jihad in 2007 to establish what the rebels call a Caucasus Emirate.

But it is unclear how much power he wields over the insurgency, which analysts say is a loose network of groups that operate independently.

The militants have stepped up attacks over the past year in the North Caucasus, where bombings and shootouts with the authorities occur almost daily. But the timing of Wednesday's double bombing in Dagestan, occurring so soon after two female bombers struck the Moscow subway system, raised fears of a fresh wave of terrorism across the country.

Officials said the first blast Wednesday occurred as traffic police officers approached the bomber's car in the town of Kizlyar, near the Chechen border. As investigators and onlookers gathered, an assailant in a police uniform pushed through the crowd and set off another explosion. Nine police officers were among the dead, including the town's police chief.

In televised remarks, Putin said the attack may have been committed by "the same gang" responsible for the Moscow blasts. "It does not matter for us in what part of the country these crimes have been committed or who -- people of what ethnicity or religion -- have fallen victim to these crimes," he said, ordering police reinforcements in the North Caucasus. "We see this as a crime against Russia."

The subway bombings were the first suicide attacks in Moscow in nearly six years and raised questions about Putin's record of maintaining peace in the capital, as well as his brute-force approach to suppressing militants.

President Dmitry Medvedev, Putin's protégé, has pushed for a more balanced strategy in the North Caucasus, appointing officials there who have sought to improve economic conditions, open talks with critics and draw public support away from the rebels.

"The terrorists want to destabilize the situation in the country, to destroy civil society, and are driven by the desire to sow fear and panic among people. We will not let this happen," Medvedev said at a session of the Russian Security Council.

Gulnara Rustamova, head of Mothers of Dagestan for Human Rights, said conditions in the province seemed to have been improving since Medvedev appointed a new governor last month. Wednesday's attack, she said, may have been intended to undermine the governor's efforts.

"I hope he has the wisdom and enough strength to take the right steps and to continue building the dialogue in society," she said. "We are all so sick and tired of all these terrorist acts and unlawful murders. We want to live in peace and to be safe."

Mar 31, 2010

BBC News - Twelve killed by twin bombings in Russia's Dagestan

Image by Bolshakov via Flickr

BBC News - Twelve killed by twin bombings in Russia's Dagestan

Jan 4, 2010

Jordanian informant lured CIA operatives into suicide attack, officials say

Image via Wikipedia

By Joby Warrick and Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, January 4, 2010; 3:52 PM

The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives in Afghanistan last week was a Jordanian informant who lured intelligence officers into a meeting with a promise of new information about al-Qaeda's top leadership, according to two former U.S. government officials briefed on the incident.

The informant had been working undercover in eastern Afghanistan for weeks, and had already provided U.S. spies with what one official described as "actionable intelligence" when he set the trap, the sources said.

In addition to the seven operatives, the bomb blast at a CIA base in Khost province killed a Jordanian intelligence official who had been assigned to work with the informant, the officials said.

The alleged bomber, identified as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, was picked up in a vehicle a distance from the CIA base and apparently was not thoroughly searched before being brought into the compound, said one of the former officials, a veteran counterterrorism officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the incident remains under investigation.

"He was someone who had already worked with us," said the official, adding that the informant had been jointly managed by U.S. and Jordanian intelligence agencies.

The CIA declined to comment.

Image via Wikipedia

The name of the alleged bomber was first reported by al-Jazeera, which described Balawi as a physician from the Jordanian town of Zarqa, also the home of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the slain former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Al-Jazeera reported that Balawi had been recruited to help track down Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian physician and No. 2 leader of al-Qaeda. MSNBC also reported that Balawi was the bomber.

The role of Jordanian intelligence at the CIA's Forward Operating Base Chapman was tacitly acknowledged over the weekend when the body of the dead Jordanian intelligence operative was flown home for a military burial in the capital city of Amman. The man, identified in Jordanian press accounts as Sharif Ali bin Zeid, was assigned to work as a "handler" for Balawi, the former U.S. counterterrorism official said.

Jordan is a key ally in the U.S. fight against al-Qaeda, and its intelligence operatives have been integrated into missions in the Middle East and beyond, current and former U.S. intelligence officials say.

"They know the bad guy's . . . culture, his associates, and more [than anyone] about the network to which he belongs," said Jamie Smith, a former CIA officer who worked in the border region in the years immediately after U.S.-backed Afghan forces drove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. Jordanians were particularly prized for their skill in both in interrogating captives and cultivating informants, owing to an unrivaled "expertise with radicalized militant groups and Shia/Sunni culture," said Smith, who now heads a private security company known as SCG International.

Yet, despite Jordan's critical role, officials from both countries have insisted that its participation remain virtually invisible, in part to avoid damaging Amman's standing among other Muslim nations in the region, former intelligence officials said.

U.S. intelligence officials declined to comment on the death of the Jordanian officer or to specify the role Jordanian agents were playing in the region. "We have a close partnership with the Jordanians on counterterrorism matters," acknowledged a U.S. counterterrorism official, who agreed to discuss the sensitive relationship on the condition of anonymity. "Having suffered serious losses from terrorist attacks on their own soil, they are keenly aware of the significant threat posed by extremists."

Bin Zeid was on one of the CIA's most sensitive listening posts in eastern Afghanistan when a suicide attacker exploded a bomb in the middle of a group of CIA officers and contractors. The seven Americans killed included the CIA base chief.

The base, in Afghanistan's eastern province, is at the heart of the CIA's operations along the Afghan-Pakistan border. It provides critical intelligence for strikes against al-Qaeda and Taliban positions, including targeting information for CIA unmanned aircraft, which carried out more than 50 strikes in Pakistan's autonomous tribal region in the past year. The base also is frequently a setting for debriefing of informants, current and former officials said.

Jordan's official news agency, Petra, said bin Zeid was killed "on Wednesday evening as a martyr while performing the sacred duty of the Jordanian forces in Afghanistan" and provided no further details about his death. Local news reports quoted family members as saying bin Zeid had been in Afghanistan for 20 days and had been scheduled to travel home on the day of the bombing.

His coffin's arrival in Amman on Saturday was handled with unusual pomp, with Jordan's King Abdullah II and his wife, Rania, personally presiding over a funeral and burial in a military cemetery.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the special relationship with Jordan dates back at least three decades and has recently progressed to the point that the CIA liaison officer in Amman enjoys full, unescorted access to the fortress-like headquarters of the Jordanian spy agency, known as the General Intelligence Department. The close ties helped disrupt several known terrorist plots, including the thwarted 2000 "millennium" conspiracy to attack tourists at hotels and other sites. Jordanians also provided U.S. officials with communications intercepts in summer 2001 that warned of terrorist plans to carry out a major attack on the United States.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Jordan agreed to create a bilateral operations center with the CIA and helped in interrogations of non-Jordanian suspects captured by the CIA and transferred to Jordan in now-famous "rendition" flights. Jordan's role was criticized at the time by human rights groups, and a United Nations inquiry in 2007 concluded that security officials had committed acts of torture, an accusation denied by Jordan.

Critics of the country's pro-U.S. policy say the closeness stems in part from Jordan's receipt of about $500 million worth of economic and military aid from the United States each year and from Jordan's status as one of only two Arab states to have signed a peace agreement with Israel. But Jordanian officials say the cooperation with the CIA is motivated by a mutual understanding of the danger posed by al-Qaeda and the religious extremism and violence it espouses.

"If al-Qaeda targets America, it also targets our stability and the peace of this region," a Jordanian intelligence said in a recent interview. "Based on this stance, we have had many successes countering terrorism."

Staff writer Dana Priest and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Aug 29, 2009

Would-Be Killer Linked to Al Qaeda, Saudis Say - NYTimes.com

Image via Wikipedia

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO — A suicide bomber who was trying to kill the head of Saudi Arabia’s antiterrorism efforts stumbled just short of his target and fell, detonating an explosion that had been arranged by an affiliate of Al Qaeda, a spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry said Friday.

The Saudi official, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who serves as deputy interior minister and is a member of the royal family, was slightly wounded in the attack in the Red Sea port of Jidda, Saudi Arabia, on Thursday, said Gen. Mansour al-Turki, the spokesman for the Interior Ministry.

The prince had allowed the wanted militant, who had come saying he wanted to turn himself in, to bypass security as a sign of good faith, General Turki said. The militant was killed by the explosion, the authorities said.

“He expressed his desire to turn himself in directly to the prince and the prince granted him his complete trust by requesting that he not be searched,” General Turki said. “And this is something that the prince does. It is not the first time, but it did not end in this deceptive manner before.”

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Saudi arm of the terrorist network, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a message posted on Islamist Internet forums and translated by the SITE Intelligence Group. The attack was the first terrorist assault on a member of the royal family in decades.

It came during the holy month of Ramadan, after a long day of fasting, when the prince was greeting well-wishers in his home. When the man was allowed to bypass the security gate, he stumbled and fell, detonating the explosion, according to Interior Ministry officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release details.

The prince was taken to a hospital, where he was met by King Abdullah, in a meeting broadcast on Saudi television. The king could be heard on the broadcast telling the prince that the man should have been required to go through the security measures, and the prince acknowledged that it was his mistake.

The attacker was a wanted militant who had insisted on meeting the prince to announce that he was giving himself up to the authorities, General Turki said. Members of the royal family in Saudi Arabia traditionally receive visitors during Ramadan and at other times of the year.

General Turki said that the authorities were aware of plans by Islamic militants to kill government officials and religious figures, but that the bombing provided a warning to be vigilant.

Prince Mohammed is the son of the interior minister, Prince Nayef bin Abdel Aziz, who is technically third in line to the Saudi throne.

In 2003, militants launched a 20-month wave of violence across Saudi Arabia that included the bombing of foreigners’ residential compounds in Riyadh; shootings of Western citizens and the beheading of an American; gun battles in Riyadh, Mecca and Buraida; suicide attacks on Saudi government buildings and oil facilities; and the storming of the United States Consulate in Jidda.

The Interior Ministry responded with a crackdown that is estimated to have resulted in thousands of arrests. Amnesty International reported last month that “massive human rights violations” and acts of torture had been committed by the Saudi security forces in their effort to contain radicalism.

Six weeks ago, after secret trials, more than 300 militants, many accused of having ties to the Qaeda network, were tried and convicted, and some were given prison terms of 30 years, the Saudi Press Agency reported. Jamal A. Khashoggi, the editor of Saudi Arabia’s Al Watan newspaper, said he feared that the attack was a sign of a new tactic for Al Qaeda. Prevented by security operations from carrying out complex bombing attacks, he said, the militants may shift to strategic assassinations of leaders to destabilize the Saudi state.

“It is serious,” he said. “What I am afraid of is that Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia will be transformed into an assassin’s group.”

Nadia Taha and Sharon Otterman contributed reporting from New York, Mona el-Naggar from Cairo, and Muhammad al-Milfy from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.