Were Saudi forces in cahoots with al Qaeda?

1.00pm - By ANDREW GUMBEL

The grieving family of Paul Johnson, the US military contractor beheaded by Saudi extremists, were still awaiting word on the whereabouts of his body on Sunday, even as Saudi security forces claimed a major victory against al Qaeda following the deaths of four of Johnson's alleged abductors.

With both the Saudi government and its al Qaeda opponents vowing to bring death and destruction to each other, a number of troubling questions began to surface about the traumatic events leading to Mr Johnson's grotesque killing last Friday.

Where was the body, which Saudi authorities claimed his abductors were in the process of dumping when they were ambushed and shot dead shortly after the murder? How come the security forces were unable to locate the kidnap gang for six days, then tracked them down hours after the murder was carried out?

Is it possible - as a jihadi website alleged yesterday - that members of the security forces were somehow in cahoots with al Qaeda?

None of these questions were addressed in the official statements from the Saudi leadership, which focussed instead on the dead al Qaeda militants and the arrest of 12 other suspected al Qaeda sympathisers.

Police were last night continuing their search for Johnson's body and the militants involved in his death. Yesterday, armoured vehicles and a helicopter sealed off three neighbourhoods of the Saudi capital, searching any cars that tried to leave the areas.

Police cars and armoured vehicles and a large contingent of emergency forces filled the area, and blockades were set up at all the entrances to the al-Malaz district.

Witnesses said that they saw shooting between suspects and police before some men fled on foot, seeking refuge in a house.

It was the same area where Abdulaziz al-Moqrin, believed to be the leader of al-Qaida in Saudi Arabia, and three other militants were killed in a shootout with Saudi security forces on Friday, hours after photos of Johnson's body and severed head were posted on a website.

Another dead militant, Turki al-Muteiri, was said by the Interior Ministry to be one of the gunmen who escaped following a bloody siege of a residential compound in the oil city of al-Khobar last month.

A third, Ibrahim al-Dreihim, was accused of helping to prepare a suicide bombing on a Riyadh residential compound last November. And the fourth, Faisal al-Dakheel, was suspected of involvement in several murders including that of a US citizen in Riyadh.

Saudi King Fahd said yesterday that the attackers would not succeed in their aim to harm the kingdom.

"The perpetrators of these attacks aimed at shaking stability and crippling security - and it is a far fetched aim, God willing," he said in a speech to the advisory Shura Council.

"We will not allow this destructive bunch, led by deviant thought, to harm the security of this nation or affect its stability."

Crown Prince Abdullah issued aggressively-worded statements vowing not to let al Qaeda challenge their grip on power.

"We tell this deviant group and others that if they do not return to the right path, they will meet the same fate (as al- Moqrin) or worse," Crown Prince Abdullah said.

A radical Islamic website, meanwhile, posted a posthumous article by al-Moqrin justifying the treatment of Johnson as an attack on "an infidel, a warrior of the military".

The Apache helicopters that Mr Johnson worked to maintain were, he said, used to support "enemies of Islam" in the Palestinian territories, the Philippines and Kashmir.

To critics who had urged clemency for Johnson, he countered: "Do those people want to see this infidel carry on the killing of the children and the raping of the women in Baghdad and Kabul?"

A separate article posted on the site alleged that Johnson's abductors had used police uniforms and cars given to them by sympathisers within the security services to set up a fake checkpoint where they seized their prey on a Riyadh street nine days ago.

"We ask God to reward them and that they use their energy to serve Islam and the mujahedeen," the article read.

- INDEPENDENT