Bin Nayif Assassination Attempt

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An unidentified militant pretended to surrender to authorities, then blow himself up while being searched in an assassination attempt on the Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Muhammad Bin Nayif. The blast occurred in Bin Nayif’s private office in Jidda, close enough to lightly wound the Prince.

The attack is the first confirmed jihadi assassination attempt on a senior prince in Saudi history. There have been rumours of such attempts in the past, but none have ever been confirmed. The attack was claimed by al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula (QAP), showing that it is definitely after the royal family.  The attack underlines QAP’s ideological turn as they move to a more revolutionary direction and away from focusing exclusively on Western targets.

Muhammad Bin Nayif’s role in the Saudi counterterrorism apparatus is as the top CT official and the main contact point between the state and the radical Islamist community. Militants go to see him when they want to surrender. He has been doing personal behind-the-scenes liaison work with the jihadi community since at least the late 1990s.

Because of this, Bin Nayif has received hundreds of jihadis in his office and never experienced any security problems.  Over time, this made the office overconfident about their security. Also, the fact that it was 11.30 at night during a popular Ramadan reception probably made security even more lax. The bottom line is that it didn’t take a lot of planning to pull this off, so it doesn’t say a whole lot for QAP’s operational capabilities.  However, I doubt access to Bin Nayif will be hard to come by in the coming months.