Nine of the accused – four of whom have already been detained and five who are still at large – were referred to court, on charges of joining into an illicit organization for the purpose of breaching public order, jeopardizing the Kingdom’s integrity and security and exploiting terrorism as one of its means to achieve such purposes.
Also, the gang trained on explosives making, manufacturing and possession of explosive devices and using them in breaching public security and implementing terrorist purposes, creating blasts for the sake of scaring citizens and residents and fundraising to finance the gang.
The case has been decided to be considered in the session of 28-2-2013 at the Grand Criminal Court.
The Public Prosecution has conducted successive investigations ever since the incident was reported. Investigations unveiled that the accused et alia made the warehouse their location to manufacture the explosives for the purpose of using these explosives in implementing their plots in terms of targeting security personnel, civilians and properties with the intention of destabilizing the country and damaging its economic components. Investigations concluded that the accused had two other locations in Tashan and Aali in which they stored the tools and materials used in the manufacturing process and to convene their organizational meetings.
These locations were searched as well as the homes of the accused reliant upon permission from the Public Prosecution. The search resulted in finding ready-to-use explosives as well as tools, equipment and materials used in manufacturing and in detonation devices in addition to records and other items which consisted of methods and techniques of manufacturing explosives.
The Public Prosecution order the taking of fingerprints and traces and appointing of specialized experts in order to examine the found packages and materials. The Public Prosecution also order the taking of fingerprints and traces from the gang’s locations. Experts reports concluded that the packages found were explosives consisting of a mixture of nitroglycerin and nitro-cellulose which is a highly explosive mixture classified as a type of dynamite explosives. The mixture is also considered a highly explosive highly destructive on properties and lives. The mixture can be prepared from the materials found in the warehouse which are in themselves chemical compounds usable in manufacturing of some sort of highly explosive devices such as dynamite and TNT.
Also upon unloading the electronic memory which was found with the accused it turned out that it contained video clips and lessons on how to manufacture bombs, explosive substances, “Al-Qassam” rockets, anti-armor packages, techniques for procurement of substances usable in their manufacturing. Also, from examining the DNA traces and fingerprints taken from the gang’s location it turned out that these were identical to a number of those accused.
The senior public attorney also stated that after detectives’ following up the activities of those accused, it turned out that some of them were behind the explosions which took place near the Exhibitions Center on 22/11/2001 who had prepared two explosive packages from those which had been manufactured and planted them near the Center and detonated them remotely using a mobile phone and a wireless bell in order to spread fright and panicking amongst the people and to foil an event organized at the Exhibition Center at that time. This resulted in damaging a number of motorcars found there and also damaged a house located near the explosion location.
The CID Laboratory report at that time upon examining shrapnel, wires and traces left from the incident confirmed that the explosive device had been detonated by remote control in the same manner. The Public Prosecution obtained a warrant of arrest against the fleeing accused persons in order to incarcerate them pending the case.