Saudi Arabia arrests scores with forged passports, suspects terrorist links

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi authorities have detained scores of people who entered the kingdom on forged passports for the hajj pilgrimage and may belong to terrorist groups, police said Monday. <br> <br> Most of the arrests took place at the international airport in Jiddah during the hajj, which ended last week, police said. <br> <br> Preliminary investigations showed none of the detainees were planning to carry out terrorist activities during the pilgrimage, but they had falsified passports and were suspected members of terrorist organizations, police said. <br> <br> Some 2 million Muslims came to the holy city of Mecca this year for the annual event. <br> <br> A police official in Jiddah who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity did not provide an exact number of detainees, saying only it was scores. He said most were Arabs but he did not say from which countries. Others came from Asia, including Pakistan, he said. <br> <br> Security was tight for the hajj following the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born dissident accused of masterminding the attacks on the United States, is a sharp critic of the Saudi royal family. <br> <br> Officials said the number of undercover intelligence officers in Mecca had been doubled, though they did not give exact figures. Surveillance cameras were set up on street corners, and the government installed digital eye-scanning and fingerprinting machines to collect data on pilgrims at the Jiddah airport. <br> <br> <br>