There’s the strange case of a dead Saudi prince (or perhaps not. Reporting is ambiguous to my eye.) whose body was found in an upscale hotel in London. His alleged killer is also a Saudi prince. At this point, there are few useful details, so speculating on what it’s all about would be exactly that: speculation. The accused is also alleged to have assaulted the decedent earlier last month. Here’s the Associated Press take on the story:
Saudi prince accused of murder appears in UK court
LONDON (AP) – A Saudi Arabian prince has appeared in a British court charged with murdering his assistant in a luxury London hotel room.
Thirty-three-year-old Saud Bin Abdulaziz Bin Nasir Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is accused of killing Bandar Abdullah Abdulaziz, also from Saudi Arabia, at the Landmark Hotel.
Police found the 32-year-old victim’s body in his suite on Monday. An autopsy shows he died of strangulation and head injuries.
The prince _ whose grandfather is a brother of the current Saudi king, Abdullah _ appeared at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday to confirm his personal details. He was assisted by an Arabic interpreter during the brief hearing.
Judge Timothy Workman remanded him in custody and ordered him to appear at court again on May 28.
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The Saudi Embassy in London issued a statement, here published by Asharq Alawsat, saying only that it was following its normal procedures in overseeing the matter as it works its way through the British legal system and offering legal support:
Statement from The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, London
20/02/2010
Prince Saud bin Abdulaziz bin Nassir bin Abdulaziz al Saud:
The Royal Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been advised that it cannot comment on the details of this case beyond stating that Prince Saud strongly denies the charges relating to the tragic death of his traveling companion Bandar Abdullah Abdulaziz.
The Embassy is very deeply saddened by these tragic events involving two Saudi nationals which affect both their families. The Embassy will continue, in accordance with its normal practice and British and Saudi Arabian law and custom, to look after and protect the interests and welfare of all Saudi nationals concerned and their families.
Media coverage notes that the prince does not have diplomatic immunity and will therefore have to stand and face the charges. The British newspaper Telegraph notes, however, that as a member of the Saudi royal family, the accused might avoid prosecution under the terms of the 1961 Vienna Convention. The Saudi Embassy, however, has not sought such immunity.
The issue, by the way, is not being ignored by the Saudi media. Arab News reported on the murder two days ago:
‘Popular Mechanics’, an American magazine focused on practical applications of science and engineering, takes a look at what it calls ‘The World’s 18 Strangest Airports’. King Fahd Airport, in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, is ranked #15, for being the world’s largest.
Of note, the next ranked airport, Denver, has a look close to that of the Haj Terminal at King Abdulaziz Airport in Jeddah. It’s not surprising, however, given the input of architect/engineer Horst Berger.
Background:
King Fahd International is the largest airport in the world in terms of landmass, sprawling over 300 square miles of desert. The airport is so enormous that it is actually about 11 square miles larger than Saudi Arabia’s neighbor, Bahrain.Why It’s Unique:
Among the many features that make this airport stand out is a mosque large enough to take in thousands of people. Also notable, though not entirely uncommon in Saudi Arabia, is the Royal Terminal, which is designed to service the Royal Family and is outfitted with an elegant reception hall and a pressroom. One of the major obstacles during the construction of the airport, Schreckengast says, was the lack of fresh water to mix concrete.
Saudi Gazette/Okaz runs a piece in which an official from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs pats itself on the back for the absence of female terrorists in the country. I think the statement lacks one, very serious qualifier: yet.
Interviews with the wives of captured or killed Saudi terrorists suggest that they are just as extreme in their views. The only thing that has stopped them from taking part in terrorist activities directly has been lack of opportunity, not lack of volition. Too, Saudi women, again according to Saudi media reports, have been arrested for supporting terrorism and for not reporting their ‘deviant’ husbands.
No women extremists, says Islamic Affairs aide
By Naeem Tamim Al-HakimJEDDAH – Majed Al-Mursal, an advisor to the Minister of Islamic Affairs and a committee member of the “Al-Munasaha” terrorist rehabilitation program, has said there is “not a single extremist woman in our country”, citing negligible extremism in women when compared to the numbers of males detained over terrorist acts.
“There might exist, and has existed, a form of extremism in female circles but in my opinion it is very limited, and that is due in general to the nature of women, but particularly due to the nature of our society,” Al-Mursal said.
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Arab News carries this story of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice repudiating allegations that the man recently found with six wives was one of their officials. Rather, they say, he was a security guard. They are quick to point out that it was they who led to his detention.
Haia says man keeping 6 wives not an agent
JEDDAH: The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Haia) Thursday denied reports that the 56-year-old man charged and convicted of marrying more than four wives is a commission agent. Instead, a Haia spokesman said, the man was a security guard of a Haia precinct in Masarha, Jazan.
“The accused was neither a field employee nor an administrator in the Haia but rather a building security man,” Abdul Mohsen Al-Qifari, director of public relations for the Riyadh-based General Presidency of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, said in a statement. Al-Qifari said the Haia had been responsible for investigating and pursuing charges against the man. He was arrested in July 2008. The man, who has not been identified publicly, was sentenced by a court in this southern town to 120 lashes and ordered to memorize chapters of the Holy Qur’an. He has also been prohibited from leaving the country for five years or delivering sermons and leading prayers in mosques.
“By dealing with this case the Haia is sending a clear message that it will not favor or spare anyone who breaks the divine laws,” the spokesman said in his letter.
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The story of ‘Fatima’, the Saudi woman forceably divorced by a court because her brothers believe she’d entered into an ‘unsuitable’ marriage, is done. The Saudi Supreme Judicial Council overruled lower court findings and, essentially, told her brothers to knock off their tribalism-based complaints.
Sadly, it took more than four years for this travesty to get sorted out. That’s the kind of thing that brings disrepute not only on the heads of the brothers, but also the Saudi legal system and Saudi Arabia as a whole. Hopefully, this is also the kind of thing that will be made impossible following reform of the legal system and better training of judges. As for the brothers and their attitudes, well, changing people’s minds is easier said than done…
Forced-divorce victims; Fatima, Mansour finally together
WALAA HAWARI | ARAB NEWSRIYADH: After over fours years of legal wrangling over whether step-brothers can forcibly divorce a relative, Fatima Al-Azzaz and Mansour Al-Timani finally went home as a married couple with children on Wednesday night, after the Supreme Judicial Council overruled on Saturday a lower court’s in-absentia marriage annulment between the couple.
A source at the Human Rights Commission (HRC) lauded the conclusion of this case, saying the HRC’s president Bandar Al-Iban, “pointed out that the decision of Supreme Judicial Council reflects the judicial system’s independence, impartiality and care for the benefit of family and the rights of children.”
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An interesting article in Arab News, though I think the expert being quoted is off-target on several points. Turki Al-Rasheed notes that water is a problem, but he says that ‘renewable water’ could be recaptured in run-off. Frankly, other than sewage water, which could be renewed and recycled, I don’t know what water he’s talking about. His mention of ‘dams’ suggests he mean run-off from rain storms, but that is both unpredictable and impractical in widespread areas.
He appears to be politically tone deaf when he says that rather than leasing lands in Africa and Asia for agriculture, Saudis should be buying it outright. Leases avoid the taint of ‘colonialism’—overwrought criticism, but still leveled against these projects. Leases allow for the easy and scheduled repatriation of land; ownership would require nationalization by the various countries, an act that carries its own, negative taint.
Al-Rasheed does note that genetically modified (GM) crops provide part of the answer. I think he’s right there: some GM crops have been developed that deal well both with higher salinity and less water. More might be developed, but it’s not a total solution.
Al-Rasheed also seems to believe that a broad agricultural base would provide job opportunities for large numbers of Saudis. Theoretically, perhaps it would. In the past, it in fact did provide the livelihood for a great portion of the Saudi population. Given the current Saudi attitudes toward manual labor, however, I’m not sure the concept would work. I just don’t see thousands of Saudi university graduates flocking to the fields to find jobs.
What we’re left with, I think, is a man making a special pleading for his own business and business sector. Unfortunately, both geological fact and sociological and political currents are running against him.
Kingdom must have agriculture base, says Al-Rasheed
SHAHEEN NAZAR | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: Many people do not believe that three million Saudis are below the poverty line and 91 percent Saudis earn less than SR6,000 [US $1,600] a month, said Turki Faisal Al-Rasheed, chairman of Golden Gras Inc., a major agricultural company based in Riyadh.
He said Saudi Arabia should do everything possible to help rural masses that depend on agriculture. Water scarcity is one of the limiting factors to local food production. To overcome this the government should build dams to tap the renewable water so that small stake farmers in rural areas get water for irrigation.
According to Al-Rasheed, the Kingdom gets six to eight million cubic meters of rainwater yearly. “Our strategy should be to make optimum use of whatever little rainwater we get,” he said here on the sidelines of the just-concluded Jeddah Economic Forum in which he was one of the panelists.
Al-Rasheed said the secret behind China’s success was its farm policy of the 1990s. It invested with small farmers and gave them a free hand.
“That became the engine of growth for the country,” he said.
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There’s a strange story buzzing along, right at radar height in the US. The source is the Christian Broadcast Network—home of Pat Robertson and the ’700 Club’—so its reliability is suspect, to say the least. It’s being picked up by other news organizations however.
Five Muslim Soldiers Arrested at Ft Jackson in South Carolina
CBN News has learned exclusively that five Muslim soldiers at Fort Jackson in South Carolina were arrested just before Christmas. It is unclear whether the men are still in custody. The five were part of the Arabic Translation program at the base.
The men are suspected of trying to poison the food supply at Fort Jackson.
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Donald Sensing, a blogger, Christian minister, and a former public affairs officer and criminal investigator for the US Army, however, says it’s nonsense, that as reported, the story simply doesn’t match up with the way the US military does things, from public relations to its judicial system.
I know the Rev. Sensing through correspondence over the years. Sometimes the topic was even Islam and he’s no Islamophobe. I’ll take his version.
Fort Jackson Poison Plot – nothing there
FoxNews says that the US Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (CID) is investigating reports of a plot by Muslim soldiers, enlisted as translators, to “poison the food supply” at Fort Jackson, SC, next to Columbia, the state’s capital.The ongoing probe began two months ago, Chris Grey, a spokesman for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, told Fox News.
The Army is taking the allegations “extremely seriously,” Grey said, but so far, “there is no credible information to support the allegations.”
The suspects were part of a Arabic translation program called “09 Lima” and use Arabic as their first language, two sources told Fox News. Another military source said they were Muslim.
I finished my Army career as the chief of public affairs for CID Command and became fairly expert in investigative procedures. If, after two months of investigation, CID agents have “no credible information to support the allegations,” then I feel very safe saying that there is nothing to see there, move along. Nor should you take Mr. Grey’s statement as misdirection or cover. If there were substantive leads for an ongoing investigation, he would have said simply that the investigation continues and then said nothing more about it. Army PAOs do not do cover up, they just shut up. After all, as my colonel kept reminding me when I was chief of media relations for XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg, “you will never get into trouble for saying too little.”
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‘The Atlantic’ magazine also downplays the CBN report. The comments section to the article, though, does draw some who see conspiracy in the reporting/not-reporting of the story. They also see an Islamic plot, but that goes without saying, I think.
In this column in Asharq Alawsat, Dr. Aaidh al-Qarni wonders just what motivates some Muslims to try and make enemies with the rest of the world. By identifying everyone, from Jews and Buddists to inventors and discoverers as ‘enemies of Islam’, al-Qarni says, these imams end up talking only to themselves and their neighbors. Is this what Islam needs? He calls for reason, wisdom, and responsibility on the part of preachers. That’d be nice.
Do Not Threaten Humanity
Dr. Aaidh al-QarniMany Muslims have an amazing ability of making the world hostile towards them and turning friends into enemies. For example, we find that political discourse in some Arab and Islamic states carries threats and menace toward other states. Yet, these same weak and lamentable Arab and Islamic states are incapable of providing bread and security to their respective peoples and to remedy their illiteracy!
I saw on the Al-Arabiya satellite television channel an Iranian reformist thinker deriding his country’s regime and saying: I do not know where the death slogan list is going to take us! In fact, the regime began with the slogan ‘Death to America,’ and then added ‘Death to Israel. Then, it had doubt over Britain and added ‘Death to Britain!’ And when a French newspaper reported news of demonstrations in Iran, they added ‘Death to France!’ Similarly, if Russia fails to use its veto to bloc any sanctions decision against Iran then they will add ‘Death to Russia!’ Perhaps Somalia will be the next to be added to the list, in addition to Burkina Faso and Ghana because of their good relations with the United States! In the end they will chant ‘Death to the World!’
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Arab News runs this piece on the arrest of one of its Most Wanted on a list of 85 terrorists.
Wanted Saudi in list of 85 terrorists arrested
Mahad MohamedRIYADH: A wanted Saudi terrorist was arrested in Yanbu on Wednesday, according to a spokesman of the Ministry of Interior.
He was No. 10 in the list of wanted 85 Saudi terrorists published last year. The terror suspects still have the opportunity to turn themselves in and return to the right path, the spokesman said, adding that special teams have been set up to track down these terrorists.
Arab News runs a story based on the speech given by Christopher Allsopp at the Jeddah Economic Forum, now winding up in that city. In the piece, Allsopp points to the dangers inherent in poor pricing practices of commodities such as oil, but also for water and energy in the Gulf States.
He notes that strong spikes in the price of oil—coupled with environmental concerns—leads to irreversible substitution and a loss to oil producers’ incomes. Technological advance, never predictable, can result in new methods to run automobiles, he suggests, that would leave the producers wanting.
But bad pricing policies affect more than petroleum, he says. By overly subsidizing water and petroleum products, the Gulf States have created a demand that bears no relationship to reality and which will become unmeetable in the near future. Water, he says, should be priced highly in desert regions as it is, in fact, very expensive. Giving it away creates perverse incentives for consumers. Similarly, heavy subsidization of gasoline and natural gas, in an effort to ‘spread the wealth’, takes away the possibility of using the moneys lost through subsidization for better targeted ends. Definitely worth reading.
The hidden danger of an oil spike
Roger Harrison | Arab NewsJEDDAH: Professor Christopher Allsopp, invited speaker at the Jeddah Economic Forum, is director of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, founded in 1982 as an autonomous centre for advanced research into the social science areas of energy issues.
“Our institute is not terribly impressed by the peak oil story. But there is a question now beginning to emerge from analysts in this country and elsewhere, as to whether oil demand has reached a plateau — or is likely to,” he said in an exclusive interview with Arab News.
“It certainly has in the OECD countries and it might go further but it’s being held up by the growth of India and China.”
He opined that one lesson thoroughly learned in Saudi Arabia is that very high oil prices — even for short periods — have nonlinear effects on people’s behavior in a way that is probably irreversible.
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While the Quran authorizes up to four wives, nowhere does it authorize six. So, I can’t imagine what this Saudi—a member of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, no less—might have been thinking. I find it curious that the judge found ‘insufficient evidence of zina‘, adultery. Four legal wives; two illegal wives. Unless he was not having sex with two of them, how could this not be positive proof of adultery?
Perhaps that’s what the judge couldn’t prove…
JEDDAH: A court in Al-Masarha in Jizan region has sentenced a 56-year old Saudi employee of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (the Hai’a) to 120 lashes for being married to six wives at the same time, 20 lashes per wife.
He has been ordered to memorize two chapters of the Holy Qur’an. The court also banned him from traveling abroad for five years and delivering sermons or leading prayers in mosques. The accused had claimed he did not know it was against Islamic law to have more than four wives at the same time. He told the judge that he had no education beyond elementary school.
He faced the possibility of being stoned to death, a sentence applied in Islam against married men and women for adultery. Under Sharia rules, a man may marry up to four wives. However, the judge in the case, Sheikh Salman bin Yahya Al-Wadaani, said there was insufficient evidence to apply the Had Al-Zina (the sentence for adultery), according to Al-Watan daily.
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The visit by Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, to Saudi Arabia understandably gets media coverage. Some of it is coverage of the trivial—as this piece from The Washington Post. A similar article appeared in Saudi Gazette. Other pieces, as this from Arab News, were more substantive:
Iran sponsors terrorism: Clinton
RIMA AL-MUKHTAR | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Iran on Tuesday of sponsoring terrorism the world over, including in the Kingdom. Answering a student’s question during a town-hall-style forum at Jeddah’s Dar Al-Hekma women’s college about the US pressuring Iran on nuclear weapons while giving a pass to Israel, Clinton said: “Iran has threatened other countries — including the Kingdom.Iran has funded terrorists that have launched attacks within other countries — including the Kingdom.”
Clinton said that Iran’s behavior on the world stage should raise concerns with countries in the region.
“If you were the leader of a country that’s a neighbor, or further away watching as Iran lobs longer-range missiles, watching as they have internal political turmoil so you’re not sure exactly who’s making decisions, and hearing them say that they are going to go forward with enriching uranium, discovering a secret facility that they never disclosed to anyone, violating their obligations to the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency, you’ve got to ask yourself why are they doing this?” she said in her lengthy reply to the student’s question.
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Saudi Gazette covers this town-hall meeting as well:
While in Jeddah, Secretary Clinton introduced the new US Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Rashed Hussein, on his first official trip outside the US:
Clinton introduces new OIC envoy Hussain
MARRIAM MOSSALLI | ARAB NEWSJEDDAH: “We had a very comprehensive discussion about many issues that the United States and the OIC care deeply about, and talked about action plans that we can pursue together,” said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her visit to the headquarters of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) on Tuesday morning.
After a 30-minute meeting with OIC Secretary-General Ekmeledin Ihsanoglu, both emerged with complimentary comments on the conducive talks that took place behind closed doors. She later formally introduced Rashed Hussein as US special envoy to the OIC. The secretary-general further highlighted the positive strides that the US and Muslim nations are taking and referred to Obama’s speech in Cairo as a genuine vision of future collaboration between the West and the Muslim world.
Exuding optimism, Hussein, 31, was hopeful that his appointment would bring the US and the Muslim world closer. “I am really honored and humbled to be given this position by President Obama,” said Hussein.
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Interestingly, the photos of Ms Clinton show her with her head uncovered. In the past, she has tended to wear head coverings in Islamic nations. Whether this means anything is left to the readers to discuss!
Also of some (minor) note, is that at the luncheon offered by King Abdullah, lobsters were on the menu. This is not a big deal in the West, of course, other than as a display of moderate extravagance, but in the Saudi context is not utterly trivial. Many Saudis (certainly not all and perhaps not even a majority) believe that shellfish are religiously prohibited as a foodstuff. The argument against them is the same as that which excludes shellfish from a Kosher diet: shellfish are believed to be (wrongly) ‘eaters of carrion’. I wonder if this menu offering will shift the opinions of the abstainers?