Islamic militants and their supporters took to social media on Friday to celebrate the death of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, describing him as “the thief of the two holy mosques,” wrote a militant supporter on Twitter. “Abdullah lived and died as a servant to America,” posted another.pneumonia.
Some of the Islamic militants reportedly called Abdullah a “servant” of the Americans and claimed that he had conspired with the West to kill Muslims. Abdullah began his fight against al Qaeda nearly a decade ago when the Islamist militant group launched several attacks in the kingdom, which, with the help of the U.S., launched a massive crackdown on the group. Saudi officials reportedly jailed several suspected militants and sentenced many others to death.
Many Islamic extremists consider the Saudi royal family to be corrupt and unfit to rule. The Islamic State group, an al-Qaida breakaway group that currently holds a third of Iraq and Syria, often cites Islam’s holiest city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, as one of its targets.
Saudi Arabia is also part of a US-led coalition targeting the Islamic State group in airstrikes.
A jihadi supporter who goes by the name of Abu Azzam al-Najdi criticized the late king saying: “He sent his warplanes to kill Muslims in (Syria). He imprisoned Muslim men and women and wherever there was a war against jihadis, he was the first.”
Loyalists of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group alike organized their comments under hashtags, some that translate from Arabic into “Death of a Tyrant.”