Saudi Arabia: Arrest Warrants for Qatif Rioters

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat- Saudi Arabia’s interior ministry yesterday ordered the arrest of 23 Saudis wanted in connection to last October’s Awamiya riots in the Eastern Province city of Qatif.

The ministry’s statement said they instigated riots, disrupted traffic, destroyed public property, shot at police and used innocent people as human shields.

An official source of the Ministry of Interior described them as “a small group of people categorically not representing the innocent loyal citizens of their region and instead working to implement foreign agenda, noting that some of them have bad conduct criminal personal history.”

“We do have evidence of a relationship with somebody else abroad,” Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Mansour Turki told a news conference. “Now how much, or what kind of relationship and how strong that relationship, this still has to be investigated and that is what we want these people for.”

The interior ministry’s statement called on the wanted men to turn themselves in, and Turki said the arrest order had been issued after they had failed to report when summoned for questioning.

Some of them had criminal records, held illicit weapons, obstructed traffic and tried to incite unrest, the statement said. This showed there were coordinated efforts to provoke unrest “and to force citizens to take part in pointless confrontations,” Turki said.

In November four people were killed in the province’s Qatif oasis area when clashes broke out near police checkpoints and at a funeral.

The wanted people are in alphabetical order as follows:

1 – Ahmed Sharaf Hassan Al-Sadah

2 – Bashir Jafar Hassan Al-Mutlaq

3 – Hassan Jafar Hassan Al-Mutlaq

4 – Hussein Hassan Ali Al Rabee’i

5 – Hussein Ali Abdullah Al-Braki

6 – Khalid Abdul Karim Al-Labad

7 – Radwan Jaafar Mohammed Al Radwan

8 – Ramzi Mohammed Abdullah Al Jamal

9 – Salman Ali Salman Al Faraj

10 – Shah Ali Issa Al Shukan

11 – Abbas Ali Mohammed Al-Mazra

12 – Abdullah Salman Saleh Al Asrih

13 – Ali Hassan Ahmed Al Zayed

14 – Ali Mohammed Mahdi Khalfan

15 – Fadel Hassan Abdullah Al-Safwani

16 – Mohammed Hassan Ahmed Al Zayed

17 – Mohammed Saleh Abdullah Al-Zenadi

18 – Mohammed Ali Abdulrahim Al-Faraj

19 – Mohammed Isa Saleh Al Labad

20 – Mohammed Kadhim Jaafar Al-Shakhuri

21 – Murcy Ali Ibrahim Al Rebh

22 – Montather Ali Saleh Al-Sbiti

23 – Musa Jaafar Mohammad Al-Mabiouq