The detainees also stand accused of being part of group which shot and killed eight worshippers in the eastern Saudi village of al-Ahsa, and a separate attack in May when a male suicide bomber dressed in a burqa killed four people in a Shia mosque.
The latest arrests come after the Interior Ministry said it thwarted a suicide bomb attack on a mosque in the east of the kingdom that is capable of holding some 3,000 worshippers, as well as a string of attacks on other mosques and official buildings.
Saudi Arabia toughened its stance on Isis last year, by launching air-strikes in Iraq and Syria as part of a US-led coalition against the group’s so called Islamic State caliphate spanning swathes of Iraq and Syria, and by branding it a terrorist organisation.
Theodore Karasik, a Dubai-based geopolitical analyst, told theAssociated Pressthat arrests are part of attempts by the authorities to reassure the hard-line Sunni country’s Shia minority, who long have complained of discrimination in the kingdom.
“It sends a message that the Ministry of Interior is not losing a grip and wraps up the potential nodes of Daesh [Isis] recruits in the kingdom,” he said, using a derogatory Arabic term for Isis which also aligns itself to Sunni Islam.
It is yet unclear how the authorities will deal with the suspects, in a nation that is notorious for its liberal use of executions against prisoners.
Additional reporting by AP
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Saudi Arabia arrests over 400 suspected members of extremist group
Some of those arrested were allegedly involved in a suicide bombing in the eastern village of al-Qudeeh in May, which killed 22 people and amounted to the deadliest terror attack on the nation in over a decade.