Al-Qaeda planned to use poisoned perfume to kill officials, say Saudis

Al-Qaeda militants planned to kill Saudi government and security officials by sending poisoned gifts to their offices.

The group also "planned to rob banks and companies to finance their operations," said Saudi authorities yesterday.

Last month Saudi Arabia said it had captured 149 al-Qaeda militants in recent months who were raising money and recruiting members to carry out attacks on government facilities, security officials and the media.

"Using poisoned perfume which they planned to send as gifts is one of the ways the arrested people planned to carry out their assassinations," an interior ministry official said.

The militants, who revealed their plans to Saudi security forces, belonged to 19 al-Qaeda cells and comprised 124 Saudis and 25 foreigners.

The groups had links to militants in Somalia and Yemen, the Interior Ministry said last month.

Saudi Arabia has been fighting al-Qaeda militancy for years and quelled a three-year al-Qaeda campaign of violence in 2006.

Al-Qaeda's Yemeni and Saudi wings merged in 2009 into a new group, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen.

In August 2009 a suicide bomber posing as a repentant militant tried to assassinate Saudi Arabia's top anti-terrorism official, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, but only inflicted minor injuries.

Recently al-Qaeda has become more innovative, and Saudi security forces have intensified efforts to foil it. In October, a plot to send two parcel bombs from Yemen to the United States was foiled after a tip-off from Saudi Arabia.

The arrests announced last month were one of the largest al-Qaeda sweeps by Saudi Arabia in years. In March, the kingdom arrested 113 al-Qaeda militants, including alleged suicide bombers who it said had been planning attacks on energy facilities in the world's top oil-exporting country.

"We are still investigating the whole thing," the official said.

Chemical and poison attacks have long played a role in al-Qaeda's range of terror tactics.

A plan to fill New York's underground with deadly gas was foiled in 2003 just 45 days before it was due to be put into action, according to reports in the US.

In 2008, a US-based al-Qaeda cell also planned to contaminate Seattle's water supply with deadly poison.

A UK al-Qaeda cell planned a poison attack on Heathrow Airport in 2005, according to security sources.

The deadly poison attack planned by al-Qaeda terrorist Kamel Bourgass was to target businessmen and holidaymakers using the Heathrow Express.

The 32-year-old Islamic extremist, an illegal immigrant from Algeria, intended to smear ricin, a potentially lethal and fast-acting poison, in lavatories and on hand-rails in trains.