Global Al-Qaeda Update

Via Military.com -

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon announced Friday the capture of one of al-Qaida's most senior and most experienced operatives, an Iraqi who was attempting to return to his native country when he was captured.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the captive is Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi. He was received by the Pentagon this week from the CIA, Whitman said, but the spokesman would not say where or when al-Iraqi was captured or by whom.

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Via Militiary.com -

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Police have arrested 172 Islamic militants, some of whom were being trained abroad as pilots so they could fly aircraft in attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil fields, the Interior Ministry said Friday.

The ministry issued a statement saying the detainees were planning to carry out suicide attacks against "public figures, oil facilities, refineries ... and military zones" - some of which were outside the kingdom.

"They had reached an advance stage of readiness and what remained only was to set the zero hour for their attacks," Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Mansour al-Turki told The Associated Press in a phone call. "They had the personnel, the money, the arms. Almost all the elements for terror attacks were complete except for setting the zero hour for the attacks."

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Via Gulf Times -

ALGIERS: Algerian security forces have arrested 80 Algerian Islamists who made recent visits to Iraq for questioning about suicide bomb attacks in Algiers, a leading newspaper reported yesterday.

The daily, Echorouk, said the 80, suspected of having had links to Al Qaeda in Iraq, were being questioned about whether there was any connection between that branch of Al Qaeda and the bombings that killed 33 people in Algiers on April 11.

The attacks, the first large bombings in the centre of the Mediterranean port city in more than a decade, were claimed by the Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algerian Islamist armed group. Most of the arrested men are Islamist militants who were in Iraq to combat the US occupation, and are now back home, a security source was quoted as saying by Echorouk.

“Abdelmalek Droudkel, the leader of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, is pushing hard to hire them and take advantage of their experience in explosives, and suicide attacks,” Echorouk quoted a security source as saying.