SAUDI ARABIA: Saudi security forces battling al-Qaeda violence arrested a leading militant on Thursday, state television has reported.
An interior ministry statement read on television said Faris al-Zahrani, whom it called "one of the heads of the sedition", was arrested in a mountainous region in the south of the kingdom.
A Saudi security source told Reuters that Zahrani did not resist when he was arrested after security forces recognised him as he sat in a cafe in the town of Abha.
Zahrani, whose messages were prominently displayed on the website of al-Qaeda's organisation in the kingdom, is on a Saudi Arabian list of 26 top wanted Islamic militants, 12 of whom are still on the run after the latest arrest.
Zahrani, one of three clerics on the list, was thought to have taken a leading role in the local organisation after Saudi security forces killed its leader, Abdulaziz al-Muqrin, in June.
The ministry said a second person was arrested along with Zahrani, but did not identify him for security reasons.
Militants linked to Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda have waged a 15-month campaign of suicide bombings and shootings aimed at destabilising Saudi Arabia, and forcing Westerners from the birthplace of Islam.
Some 90 policemen and civilians, many of them foreigners, have been killed in the attacks that have targeted government institutions, oil industry sites and expatriates in the world's largest oil exporter.
After pro-US Saudi Arabia offered a one-month amnesty to militants in late June, Zahrani denied reports by a cleric that he was considering turning himself in.
"I never contemplated surrendering to any tyrant," Zahrani said in a widely-distributed message on the Internet.
Only a handful of militants took up the government offer.
Irish engineer Mr Anthony Higgins (59), from Galway, was shot dead in his office in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Tuesday, the latest shooting which has possible links to attacks by al-Qaeda supporters.
In June, Saudi gunmen killed an Irish cameraman working for the BBC and wounded his British colleague as they filmed in an Islamist militant area of Riyadh.
The government's amnesty offer followed the death of Muqrin and three other militants in a police raid after militants beheaded US hostage Paul Johnson.