Quote of the day...

"Things happen." 

-US President Donald Trump responding to questions regarding his dinner guest's ordering the torture, murder and dismemberment of a journalist. 

My thoughts on L'Affair Khashoggi

This whole thing looks less like an orchestrated murder than a planned snatch op (kidnapping) gone bad. If they wanted him dead it could have been done anywhere under circumstances that would have given the Kingdom plausible deniability. Any competent intelligence service knows how to make problems go away in a manner that can be passed off as a robbery gone bad, a suicide or even death by natural causes. The Russians are very good at this sort of thing. I'd ask Vlad for some confirmation but I don't want to spend the rest of my life checking my food and drinks with a geiger counter.

Back to Mr. Khashoggi. Assassinating someone in their consulate would have been bone crushingly stupid. No government or intelligence service with more than two brain cells in operation would do that. I think they planned to grab him, probably drug him, and smuggle him back to Saudi Arabia where they could put him on ice for a while until he agreed to play nice and/or they decided what to do with him long term.

Clearly something went wrong. A purely educated guess is he put up a fight and the subsequent interrogation got ugly. Maybe he had a heart attack. Maybe he had a bad reaction to a drug. Maybe he said somethings that ticked off people in the snatch team and somebody overreacted. We will probably never know.

But my gut says this did not start out as a planned hit.

Saudi Arabia and the Wreckovation of Mecca

WHEN Malcolm X visited Mecca in 1964, he was enchanted. He found the city “as ancient as time itself,” and wrote that the partly constructed extension to the Sacred Mosque “will surpass the architectural beauty of India’s Taj Mahal.”

Fifty years on, no one could possibly describe Mecca as ancient, or associate beauty with Islam’s holiest city. Pilgrims performing the hajj this week will search in vain for Mecca’s history.

The dominant architectural site in the city is not the Sacred Mosque, where the Kaaba, the symbolic focus of Muslims everywhere, is. It is the obnoxious Makkah Royal Clock Tower hotel, which, at 1,972 feet, is among the world’s tallest buildings. It is part of a mammoth development of skyscrapers that includes luxury shopping malls and hotels catering to the superrich. The skyline is no longer dominated by the rugged outline of encircling peaks. Ancient mountains have been flattened. The city is now surrounded by the brutalism of rectangular steel and concrete structures — an amalgam of Disneyland and Las Vegas.

Read the rest here.

A 9-11 conspiracy story that may have an element of truth

After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors.

But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress’ investigative report on 9/11 dealing with “specific sources of foreign support” for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.

It was kept secret and remains so today.

President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. Text isn’t just blacked-out here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section. The pages are completely blank, except for dotted lines where an estimated 7,200 words once stood (this story by comparison is about 1,000 words).

A pair of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion say they are “absolutely shocked” at the level of foreign state involvement in the attacks.

Read the rest here.
HT: Bill (aka The Godfather)

Longtime readers will know of my general disdain for the modern fetish for conspiracy theories. That said, this one has a ring of truth to it. War is a dirty business. It seems perfectly plausible that at a time when we urgently needed allies in the Arab world to help prosecute our War on Terror, that Bush may have told the Saudis we would allow them to deal with some embarrassing issues quietly and internally provided we got full support from the Kingdom.

Does that mean it's true? Not at all. But it does mean that unlike 9-11 trutherism, birtherism and the gazzilion +1 Kennedy conspiracy theories, this one cannot be quickly dismissed as patently silly and or flying in the face of clear facts. For my part I will remain agnostic pending further evidence.

Saudis Sentence Two For Aiding Conversion to Christianity

Naharnet today reports that a court in the Saudi Arabian city of Khobar has sentenced two men for helping a young woman, identified only as "the girl of Khobar", convert to Christianity and flee to Sweden. All 3 were co-workers at an insurance company in Khobar. A Lebanese man was sentenced to 6 years in prison and 300 lashes for encouraging the conversion. A Saudi man was sentenced to 2 years in prison and 200 lashes for helping the woman flee the country. The defendants say they will appeal. Still pending are possible charges of corruption and forging official document that allowed the woman to leave Saudi Arabia without her family's consent.

From here.

Sometimes things just need to be said bluntly. Islam is a barbarous religion.

Guilty Plea in Iranian Plot To Murder Saudi Ambassador

A former used-car salesman accused of conspiring with Iranians in an audacious murder-for-hire plot pleaded guilty Wednesday to helping plan the assassination of a Saudi diplomat at a posh Georgetown restaurant.

Manssor Arbabsiar, 58, a Texan with dual Iranian and U.S. citizenship, entered the plea in a New York courtroom just over year after his arrest in a case that shocked the world and drove U.S.-Iranian relations to a new low.

Read the rest here.

I am glad this got stopped. Much as I am loathe to get dragged into all the crap in the Middle East which is mostly none of our business, this would have been a big deal if it had gone down. No self respecting sovereign state can allow foreign governments to orchestrate the assassination of diplomatic envoys on their soil. If it had happened I don't see how we could have failed to treat it as a causus belli without dishonor.

And the lunatics in Tehran should give thanks to their false god that this ended with an embarrassing whimper rather than a bang.

Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz dies in New York

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The heir to the Saudi throne, Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz, died Saturday in the U.S. after an illness. He was 85 years old.

The death of the crown prince — who was the half brother of the ailing Saudi King Abdullah — opens questions about succession.

NBC News reported that Sultan died at a hospital in New York City. He is expected to be buried Tuesday in Riyadh.

Read the rest here.

US Accuses Iran of Plotting To Assassinate Saudi Ambassador, Attack Embassies

WASHINGTON — Two men allegedly working for "factions of the Iranian government" have been charged with plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. and to attack the Saudi and Israeli embassies, Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday.

The criminal complaint, unsealed Tuesday in federal court in New York City, identified the two as Manssor Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri.

Holder said Arbabsiar, who was arrested on Sept. 29 in New York, was working for the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard and had confessed to a plot.

Shakuri, who is based in Iran, remains at large, Holder said. He allegedly is a member of Iran's Quds Force, a special unit of the Revolutionary Guard.

Both are originally from Iran and Arbabsiar, 56, is a naturalized U.S. citizen, the complaint said.

Read the rest here.
(Note: This is breaking news.  Text at the linked article may change.)

Wow.  This is very serious.

In Britain’s Saudi-Backed Islamic Schools, Objectionable Lessons

LONDON — A British network of more than 40 part-time Islamic schools and clubs with 5,000 students has been teaching from a Saudi Arabian government curriculum that contains anti-Semitic and homophobic views, including a textbook that asks children to list the “reprehensible” qualities of Jews, according to an investigation by a BBC television documentary unit to be broadcast on Monday .

A Web site article and accompanying video clip released in advance of the 30-minute Panorama program quoted the textbook as saying that Jews “looked like monkeys and pigs”. The article quoted a separate part of the curriculum — for children as young as six — saying that someone who is not a believer in Islam at death would be condemned to “hellfire”.

A commentary on the video said the textbooks had been obtained by an “undercover” Saudi Arabian researcher from one of the schools and clubs, which meet in the evenings and on the weekend in a network overseen by the cultural bureau of the Saudi Arabian Embassy in London.

Read the rest here.

A Saudi Prince is sentenced for murder

LONDON (AP) — Life in prison, with parole possible after 20 years. That was the sentence handed down Wednesday to a Saudi prince convicted of a killing so lurid it has shocked even London, with its long history of tawdry sex crimes dating back to Jack the Ripper.

The victim, Bandar Abdulaziz, had so many internal injuries, including bleeding on the brain and a fractured larynx, that pathologists could not pinpoint the precise cause of death after his body was found in the posh Landmark Hotel.

The killer was a Saudi prince who tried in vain to hide his homosexuality from the court and had been filmed on a closed-circuit camera mercilessly beating the victim — his paid manservant — in the hotel elevator.

The frenzied killing, and the erotic nude photos of the victim found on the prince's mobile phone, have embarrassed the Saudi royal family, which has refused to comment on the matter. The case is not receiving press attention inside Saudi Arabia.

Read the rest here.

Saudi Arabia: Police raid "secret" Catholic Mass and arrest Filipinos

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi police raided a secret Catholic mass in Riyadh last week and arrested a dozen Filipinos and a Catholic priest, charging them with prosyletising, a local daily reported on Wednesday.

The raid took place as some 150 Filipinos were attending the mass in a Riyadh rest house on Friday, the second day of the weekend in Saudi Arabia, Arab News said.

The twelve Filipino men and the priest, whose nationality was not specified, were "charged with prosyletising," the daily quoted an official from the Philippine embassy in Riyadh as saying.

They were all released Sunday on guarantees by sponsors or embassies, the report said.

Saudi Arabia bans the practice of any religion aside from Islam. However, small, low-key prayer services inside expatriate compounds and in Filipino gatherings are tolerated by officials.

With more than one million workers in Saudi Arabia, Filipinos comprise the bulk of the Christian community inside the kingdom.

Filipino activists confirmed the arrests to Agence France-Presse, saying they had been released, but could not confirm the arrest of a priest.

Source.

Islamic justice: Get raped and get 200 lashes

Via FOX News:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia —
A 19-year-old female victim of gang rape who initially was ordered to undergo 90 lashes for "being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape," has been sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail for telling her story to the news media.

The new verdict was handed down by Saudi Arabia's Higher Judicial Council following a retrial, the Arab News reported.

The court last year sentenced the six heavily-armed men who carried out the attack against the Shiite woman to between one and five years for committing the crime.

But the judges had decided to punish the woman further for "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media," a court source told the Arab News.

The new verdict issued on Wednesday also toughened the sentences against the six men to between two and nine years in prison.

Saudi Arabia enforces a strict Islamic doctrine that forbids unrelated men and women from associating with each other, bans women from driving and forces them to cover head-to-toe in public.

The case has angered members of Saudi Arabia's Shiite community. The convicted men are Sunni Muslims, the dominant community in the oil-rich Gulf state.

This is simply barbaric.