By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- The bomb was hidden inside the al-Qaeda assassin's body, and he arrived on his target's personal plane.
The target was Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, a senior member of Saudi Arabia's ruling family and head of the kingdom's counterterrorism operations. The bomber, who had crossed the border from Yemen, passed at least two security checks, then detonated himself less than a yard away from the prince. Somehow, the prince survived.
But the attack, on Aug. 27 during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, has sent tremors through Saudi Arabian and Western intelligence circles. The attack, the first serious assassination attempt against a member of the Saudi ruling family in decades, raised new concerns about al-Qaeda's tactics, strength, and its use of neighboring Yemen as a haven and training ground.
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