Al Qaeda militants say they were helped by Saudi forces
 |  Al-Muqrin claimed responsibility for Johnson's killing. |
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 Reaction in the Arab world to the news of Paul Johnson's death.
 Al-Muqrin was extremely vicious, U.S. ambassador says.
 The life and death of al Qaeda leader Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin.
 Family and friends devastated by the killing.
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RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (CNN) -- Islamic militants who abducted and beheaded American engineer Paul Johnson say sympathetic Saudi security forces aided their kidnapping operation with police uniforms and vehicles -- an allegation a top Saudi official denied.
Saudi authorities continued their search Sunday night for the men behind the kidnapping, storming several buildings in the neighborhood where cell leader Abdel Aziz al-Muqrin was killed after Johnson's death.
It was not immediately clear whether anyone had been taken into custody as a result of the raid.
In a lengthy narrative about the kidnapping that was posted Sunday on the Islamist Web site Voice of Jihad, Johnson's kidnappers said they stopped his car at a fake checkpoint, transferred him to another car and took him to another location.
But Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign policy adviser to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, told CNN the claim fell "in the realm of fiction."
"It's very easy to obtain police uniforms, military uniforms," he told CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. "You go to a surplus store, and you get all you want."
Johnson was working for Lockheed Martin on June 12, when he was kidnapped. After a 72-hour deadline passed without the demanded release of all al Qaeda prisoners and the departure of all Westerners from the kingdom, photographs of Johnson's head and body were posted on the Web site.
Hours later, al-Muqrin and three others were killed in a gun battle with Saudi police, and 12 other suspected members of the cell were captured.
About 7 p.m. Sunday (noon ET), police surrounded and raided several buildings in Riyadh, where residents told police that suspected al Qaeda members had taken refuge.
The kingdom's interior ministry, which oversees its internal security forces, "is on the forefront of the war against terror," al-Jubeir said.
"The notion that our security services are infiltrated by the terrorists really doesn't hold," he said. "If that were the case, they would not be going after soft targets. They would be going after government installations."
Saudi officials and the al Qaeda cell that claimed responsibility for Johnson's killing identified the three militants killed with al-Muqrin as Faisal al-Dakhil -- number 11 on Saudi Arabia's list -- Turki al Muteiri and Ibrahim al Durayhim.
A Saudi security officer was killed and two were wounded in the operations, al-Jubeir said.
Al-Jubeir said incidents like Johnson's killing would not weaken Saudi Arabia's commitment to "go after" terrorist elements.
"They believe that if foreigners leave Saudi Arabia, and in particular Americans and other Westerners, that our economy will be crippled and our government will be weakened," he said. "It is a difficult time, but it is a manageable time. We believe that we still have control over safety in Saudi Arabia."
"We will be very vigilant in trying to ensure the safety of everybody in the kingdom," he said. "And we will be merciless when we go after the terrorists who try to wreak havoc on our society."
Critics have accused Saudi Arabia's monarchy of giving financial support to terrorists, but a staff report issued last week by the U.S. Senate's independent commission on the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks found no such evidence, a finding that al-Jubeir said "vindicated" his country.
Two members of the commission said Sunday that Saudi Arabia, along with Pakistan, had passively supported the activities of terrorists within their borders by failing to act against them, but added that that no longer appeared to be the case.
"That era is over," said former Navy Secretary John Lehman. "They now recognize the threats, and I think they are cooperating with us." (Full story)
Lehman and fellow commission member Richard Ben-Veniste each noted, however, that some Islamic schools -- madrassas -- still pose a problem.
"The history of providing support for the madrassas -- in which children are taught to hate those who do not share their common beliefs and that it is acceptable to attack, in violent forms rather than in discourses, differences in philosophies, culture and religion -- has been a principal source of worldwide unrest and support of elements hostile to Western ideas and civilization," Ben-Veniste.
"We are hopeful that now that the Saudis in particular have seen the results of these years of support of this kind of a movement, that they will now move to change what has been in place for so long."
-- CNN Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson and CNN.com Arabic Editor Caroline Faraj contributed to this report.
