Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has issued a video warning threatening to attack targets inside Saudi Arabia and demanding the release of its members in Saudi jails, the daily al- Hayat reported Wednesday.
Qassem al-Reemy, a leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, warned that the organisation intends to carry out terrorist attacks on Saudi targets, but there were no further details in the recording about what those targets may be, DPA reported.
The recording also listed the names of al-Qaeda's operatives who the group said were behind two previous attempts to assassinate Saudi's Deputy Minister of Defense, Mohamed bin Nayef, in 2009.
That plan had been to fire a rocket at Nayef's plane as it landed in Yemen - as well as firing rockets at the arrival hall where Yemeni President Abdullah Salah would be waiting to meet him, the recording said.
However, the flight was canceled after security forces foiled the attack by finding a rocket, the group said in the recording.
The video indicated that Badr Mashrou and Salem al-Nahdi, Yemeni members of the organisation who were killed in clashes with Yemini security forces, had been selected to carry out the failed attack.
The group claimed that another Yemeni, Mohamed al-Ghazali, masterminded the second attempted assassination of Nayef at his home in Jeddah, which lightly wounded the Saudi official. That attack was carried out by Abdullah al-Aseery in a suicide bombing, which killed him.
One of the group's most successful attacks came in 2003, when the group claimed responsibility for suicide bombings on Western compounds in Riyadh that left 29 people dead.