On 20 November 1979, the Grand Mosque seizure saw the al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca violently seized by a group of 500 heavily armed and provisioned Saudi dissidents led by Juhayman al-Otaybi and Abdullah al-Qahtani, consisting mostly of members of the former Ikhwan militia of Otaibah but also of other peninsular Arabs and a few Egyptians enrolled in Islamic studies at the Islamic University of Madinah. The Saudi royal family turned to the Ulema, who duly issued a "fatwa" permitting the storming of the holy sanctuary by Saudi forces, aided by French and Pakistani special ops units. According to Lawrence Wright, the GIGN commandos did first convert to Islam prior to the raid. Most of those responsible, including Al-Otaybi himself, were soon beheaded publicly in four cities of Saudi Arabia.