The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [53]
One of the ideas the government entertained was to flood the underground chambers, then electrocute everyone inside with high-voltage cables. Such a plan, however, did not distinguish the hostages from their captors, and besides, Turki realized, “you would need the entire Red Sea to fill it.” Another notion was to put explosive-laden saddles on dogs and detonate them by remote control.
With such hopeless alternatives in front of him, Turki could have called upon the American Central Intelligence Agency, which was training Saudi Army Special Forces in the nearby city of Taif. But he had found that when immediate action was needed, the French were less complicated than the Americans. He consulted the legendary spy Count Claude Alexandre de Marenches, who was then head of the French secret service. A huge, commanding presence, de Marenches recommended gas. Turki agreed, but insisted that it be nonlethal. The idea was to render the insurgents unconscious. A team of three French commandos from the Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN) arrived in Mecca. Because of the prohibition against non-Muslims entering the holy city, they converted to Islam in a brief, formal ceremony. The commandos pumped gas into the underground chambers, but perhaps because the rooms were so bafflingly interconnected, the gas failed and the resistance continued.
With casualties climbing, Saudi forces drilled holes into the courtyard and dropped grenades into the rooms below, indiscriminately killing many hostages but driving the remaining rebels into more open areas where they could be picked off by sharpshooters. More than two weeks after the assault began, the surviving rebels finally surrendered.
Oteibi was among them, looking like a wild man with his matted hair and beard, which jutted defiantly toward the television cameras that recorded the emergence of the rebels stumbling out of the underground chambers. His defiance had faded once the tragedy concluded. Turki went to see him in the hospital, where his wounds were being attended. Oteibi jumped off the bed, grabbed the prince’s hand, and kissed it. “Please ask King Khaled to forgive me!” he cried. “I promise not to do it again!”
Turki was too startled to answer at first. “Forgiveness?” he finally said. “Ask forgiveness of God.”
The government divided Oteibi and sixty-two of his disciples among eight different cities where, on January 9, 1980, they were beheaded. It was the largest execution in Saudi Arabian history.
The Saudi government admitted that 127 of its men had been killed in the uprising and 461 injured. About a dozen worshippers were killed, along with 117 rebels. Unofficial accounts, however, put the number of dead at more than 4,000. In any case, the Kingdom was traumatized. The holiest place in the world had been defiled—by Muslims. The authority of the royal family had been openly challenged. After this, nothing could remain the same. Saudi Arabia had come to a place where it would have to change, but in which direction? Toward openness, liberality, tolerance, modernity, and Western ideas of democratic progress, or toward greater authoritarianism and religious repression?
In the early days of the siege, Osama bin Laden and his brother Mahrous were arrested. They were driving home from Al-Barood, the family