Saudi Arabia Breaks Up Terror Rings, Arrests 431

The government of Saudi Arabia says it has arrested more than 400 people in a sting operation that prevented attacks on a number of targets throughout the Gulf kingdom.

Reuters reports that 431 people accused of plotting attacks on mosques, diplomatic sites, and security installations were arrested by Saudi security officers. The government said that the plotters were intending to detonate six bombs at mosques at six weeks consecutively and had also planned to carry out strikes on security installations at the time of the bombings, sowing pandemonium through the largest and richest of the Gulf nations.

Saudi Arabia has already suffered two mosque bombings in the towns of Qatif and Dammam in successive weeks in May as the Islamic State targeted the kingdom's Shiite population. Those attacks left more than 220 dead. The group is a radical Sunni organization that views anyone who is not Sunni as an infidel.

Around a month after that, a Saudi citizen crossed into Kuwait and detonated a bomb in a Shiite mosque, killing 27 people. The bomber flew into Kuwait, and was supplied with the explosives used in the attack by a group of Saudi brothers who drove them into the country from across the Saudi border.

Saudi Arabia regularly funds extremist Sunni preachers around the globe and the majority of the people who carried out the 9/11 attacks were Saudis, including the attack's mastermind of Osama bin Laden.

Saudi Arabia also practices a form of Sharia law that closely mirrors that of ISIS. Just as ISIS has grown infamous for beheading gays and stoning women, many of the same practices can be found to be taking place in Saudi Arabia, one of the United States' closest allies in the Middle East.