The Mail newspaper (as reported in The Age) is reporting that a suicide attack on a British Airways jet was foiled recently in Saudi Arabia, but that the Saudis are covering it up:
Saudi Arabia has arrested two Islamic suicide pilots who were preparing to fly two light aircraft into a packed British Airways (BA) jet, a British Sunday newspaper said, quoting a senior opposition politician.
The suspected suicide pilots were arrested in the last few weeks after they were found red-handed with aircraft loaded with explosives near Saudi Arabia’s main airport in the capital Riyadh, The Mail on Sunday said.
“My understanding is that they were found on the flight line and that the plan was to fly them into a passenger jet either about to land or take off,” said Patrick Mercer, the opposition Conservative spokesman for Homeland Security, according to the newspaper.
Mercer, who said he had been informed of the plot by an “unimpeachable” source, intended to raise the matter at the House of Commons immediately after MPs returned from their Christmas break on January 5, the newspaper reported.
Mercer claimed, according to the same source, that the Saudi authorities tried to cover up the incident near King Khalid International Airport and withheld information from authorities abroad.
Both BA and the Foreign Office, which said it had checked with “relevant agencies,” were unable to confirm the arrests.
“We never comment on security matters,” a BA spokesman said.
A BA spokesman later said the airline had no knowledge of the incident described in the paper.
“We are in regular contact with the Saudi authorities and the British government and we wouldn’t fly unless it was completely safe to do so,” a spokesman said.
“We haven’t changed our flights to or from Saudi Arabia.”
BA suspended flights to the oil-rich Gulf kingdom in August citing a security threat, but the airline resumed flying the following month after a review. Mercer was not available to elaborate on his remarks and the British Foreign Office said it was not aware of the incident.
This is puzzling. If such a thing did happen, isn’t it likely that Saudi Arabia would trumpet the foiling of a terrorist plot? Wouldn’t the Bush administration be using it for propaganda purposes to show how prescient their terror alert system is, and how helpful the Bush family friends in Saudi Arabia are?
If it’s not true, where did such a story come from, and why?
