Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — A Specialized Criminal Court in Riyadh sentenced on Sunday three members of a terrorist cell, known as “Al-Harazat”, to death for their involvement in several attacks across Saudi Arabia.

They were found guilty of several heinous crimes including attempt to kill worshippers of the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah through triggering a suicide attack near the mosque four years ago.

The verdict stated that the terror cell members had supported Daesh (so-called IS) and were planning to assassinate members of the Kingdom’s security forces and blow up the security headquarters in Jeddah.

The court awarded death penalty to the first three defendants. Other defendants were sentenced to varying jail terms, and these included 25 years of imprisonment each for the fourth and sixth defendants.

Four other defendants were also awarded jail terms. All the defendants are Saudis except for one Arab national, who was sentenced to 16 years of imprisonment.

The defendants turned their hideout in a rest house in Al-Harazat district into a factory of explosive materials. Their leader was a former detainee who was imprisoned for two years before he was released in the Hijri year of 1427.

He was imprisoned earlier for participating in a social media campaign to recruit teenagers to terror cells. The Harazat security operation in 2017 resulted in the death of two terrorists when they blew themselves up, while a number of those involved from different nationalities were arrested.

The results of the investigations and the technical examinations revealed that the cell had killed one of their members because they doubted him, thinking he intended to surrender to the security authorities, and they took approval for his killing from the organization’s leadership abroad.

It was found in investigations that the members of the cell were linked to the terrorist act that targeted worshipers in the Prophet’s Mosque in 2016, by securing the explosive belt used in the heinous crime and handing it over to the suicide bomber, Nayer Muslim Hammad Al-Najdi.

Al-Najdi, on receipt of the explosive belt, blew himself up in a parking lot near the mosque and that resulted in the death of four security men and wounding of five others.