The threat prompted the Saudi government to shut down large sections of the two cities during the day, as heavily armed security forces set up checkpoints and helicopters buzzed overhead. Some advocates of reform here said bin Laden may have timed the tape's release to coincide with the planned protest.
"It was just talk," Brig. Gen. Mansour Turki, a spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry, said of the protests that didn't happen. "It was somebody outside the country presuming they had support somehow inside the kingdom."
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AP Report: A man identified as Osama bin Laden, speaking on an audiotape posted on an Islamic Web site Thursday, criticized the Saudi regime.
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Turki said in an interview that there was no indication a protest was planned, but police assembled several buses and police vans just in case mass arrests were necessary. They also checked identity cards of pedestrians and motorists in the area, effectively preventing any small groups from congregating. "We always take things seriously," he said. "If something is illegal, it is illegal, and the police need to act."
The opposition group that had called for the protests successfully organized a rare anti-government demonstration in October 2003 in Riyadh and other cities. More than 100 people were arrested. The group's leader is Saad Fagih, an exiled physician who operates a Web site and radio show from London that call for the establishment of an Islamic theocracy.
Abdulaziz Qassim, a former religious judge who is a well-known political moderate in Riyadh, said there was pent-up desire for reform in Saudi Arabia, though few here would support Fagih's call for an end to the monarchy.
"If people respond to such radical invitations, they think the stability of the state itself will be endangered," he said in an interview this week.
He also warned that the stifling of political thought would backfire. "What we fear is that the terrorism and violence will be the only way for expressing ideas and concepts," he said. "There are no other channels for people to turn to."
Glasser reported from Washington. Staff writer Walter Pincus in Washington contributed to this report.
