The militant group, which has claimed responsibility for attacks
in the kingdom and stepped up operations in neighboring Yemen,
singled out the al-Ha'ir and Tarfiya prisons where many al Qaeda and
Islamic State supporters have been detained.
"The Islamic State always seeks to free prisoners, but we calculate
that the ending of the issues of prisoners will not happen except
with the eradication of the rule of tyrants, and then destroying
their prisons and razing them to the ground," it said in an article
posted online on Tuesday.
An Islamic State supporter killed himself in a car bomb at a
checkpoint outside Ha'ir prison near Riyadh in July.
While Islamic State and al Qaeda are rivals who have condemned each
other on ideological grounds, they are both united in enmity towards
Saudi Arabia, which has declared them terrorist groups and locked up
thousands of their supporters.
Riyadh's mass execution on Saturday included four Shi'ite Muslims,
among them prominent cleric Nimr al-Nimr, a move that heightened
sectarian tensions with Shi'ite power Iran. But anamysts say it was
mostly meant as a message to militant Sunnis.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings
and shootings in Saudi Arabia since Nov. 2014 that have killed more
than 50 people, most of them Shi'ites but also more than 15 members
of the security forces.
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Saudi security officials say the group's supporters inside Saudi
Arabia mainly act independently, depending on Islamic State for only
limited logistical help and advice, making them harder to detect,
but also less capable of attacks on well protected targets.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) threatened in December to
"shed the blood of the soldiers of Al Saud" if its members were
executed.
AQAP is the Yemen-based wing of the global militant movement and was
formed by local jihadists and veterans of al Qaeda's earlier
uprising in Saudi Arabia from 2003-06, for participation in which
most of those executed on Saturday were convicted.
(Reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo and Yara Bayoumy in Dubai;
Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Catherine Evans and Andrew
Heavens)
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