Saudi Arabia arrests princes, ex-ministers anti-corruption

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Re: Saudi Arabia arrests princes, ex-ministers anti-corrupti

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Nov 06, 2017 10:15 pm

seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 03, 2017 3:36 pm wrote:
Is Rudy Giuliani The Mastermind Behind The Trump Russia Dossier’s Massive Oil Deal?
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Rudy Giuliani meets the former Emir of Qatar in 2002. He would later become a security client of Giuliani Partners. Image via NY Times

Did Rudy Giuliani mastermind the massive oil privatization deal in the Trump Russia Dossier?
This factual report reveals the full extent of his Russian connections, and proves that his Kremlin relationships have reached directly to Vladimir Putin for a long time.

That’s probably why he’s gone nearly silent since Buzzfeed released Chrisopher Steele’s dossier.
Time Magazine once called Rudy Giuliani an “honorary Texas oil lawyer” but his drive, his New York political image and connections, and his reach inside both the Kremlin and the Persian Gulf is what elevated Bracewell & Giuliani to be considered the leading energy law firm of the last decade, and why continues to rack up awards from its peers.

Open source information shows that both the Emirate of Qatar and state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft are clients of Rudy Giuliani’s law and consulting firm, Giuliani Partners.
Russia’s Alfa Bank has also hired Rudy Giuliani as a paid speaker.

Giuliani is widely known to have extensive FBI, NYPD and Justice Department contacts. He has been hired by three of the major principals in the Trump Russia dossier oil privatization transaction and personally knows the current Russian Foreign Minister.

According to Giuliani’s former clients TriGlobal Strategic Ventures, the former Mayor met with Minister Lavrov in 2004 when he was newly hired, while employed by the venture capital firm.
Sergey Lavrov is still serving as Foreign Minister today.

The Giuliani/Lavrov relationship represents the highest level link possible between the Trump Campaign’s top surrogate and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

TriGlobal’s President Vitaly Pruss touted his relationship with Giuliani Partners on his firm’s website thusly:
From 2008 to 2011 Mr. Pruss worked closely with Giuliani Partners, LLC — international consulting company of former New york Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

According to TriGlobal’s website — which lists numerous events , many involving the former Trump campaign surrogate — in 2004 Giuliani also flew to meet with Russian billionaire Victor Rashnikov, and flew to his remote Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works.

TriGlobal also says that Giuliani spent time in Kiev, Ukraine that year — proximate to the Orange Revolution — meeting with world famous former boxing champion, and now-Mayor of Kiev Vitali Klitschko.
Rudy Giuliani’s infamous client list includes Russia’s Alfa Bank, in addition to the two main participants in the Trump Russia dossier oil deal, seller Rosneft and buyer, the Gulf Arab Emirate of Qatar’s sovereign investment fund.

Rudy Giuliani meeting with the heads of Alfa Bank in 2008.
Alfa Bank hired Rudy Giuliani in 2008 and he traveled to Moscow to give what one can only assume was a paid speech at their “Award for Excellence in Foreign Investment in Russia” which they presented to the Intel Corporation.

That’s the same Alfa Bank with whom it’s alleged that Donald Trump’s email server was stealthily communicating with through the election period, and which ultimately became a target of an FBI FISA warrant, which the BBC confirmed in January.
Rudy Giuliani is featured prominently on page 8 of the Alfa Bank Fellowship Brochure, meeting with Alfa Bank’s owners.

In late November 2014, Rudy Giuliani’s former law firm told Bloomberg News (archive.org link) that Russian state-run oil company Rosneft is one of its clients.

That was just a year after Rosneft had signed a massive deal with Exxon-Mobil — led by now-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — estimated to be worth half a trillion dollars, and after sanctions landed. Bloomberg noted:

The firm’s work for Russia’s state oil company didn’t stop the former Republican presidential candidate talking tough on sanctions against Russia.

Last year, Rosneft hired international law firm White & Case, LLP to represent them in their massive privatization transaction.

Coincidentally, Rudy Giuliani was a loss leader partner at White & Case for a brief time between his tenure in the US Attorney’s office prosecuting the Mafia, and during his first, failed campaign for Mayor of New York City in 1989.

Qatar has been a client of Giuliani Partners since 2005, when they hired the former New York Mayor — who became famous after 9/11 — to provide security tips to their Interior Ministry.

Giuliani also provided security services to the Qatari state-run oil company under that contract.
Notoriously, the former-Interior Minister of Qatar is both accused of sheltering Khalid Sheik Muhammad — who later became infamous for being a key planner of the attack that struck the Pentagon and brought down the World Trade Center towers — and of approving Giuliani’s work in the Gulf state.

The Center for Sanctions & Illicit Finance considers Qatar a major funder of ISIS in Syria.
Giuliani’s firm also worked with the largest Italian oil company Eni, who happens to be an unusually close partner of Roseneft, and just completed a new transaction in Egypt’s off-shore gas fields.

It’s another Italian-linked oil deal, which seems to circumvent current Western government-led sanctions against doing business with Roseneft.
Just like Ukraine-related sanctions against the state-run oil company have put Exxon’s 2012 Rosneft oil exploration deal on ice, as well as the Italian firm ENI’s 2013 venture with Rosneft to drill the Arctic Shelf.
ENI also executed a transaction with Rosneft last December, selling them a partial stake in an oil field in a deal that The Hill remarked represented a serious weakening of President Obama’s sanctions.

Bracewell & Giuliani represented Italy’s largest oil company, ENI, in a massive lawsuit, and won.
CNN revealed in 2007 that Giuliani’s firm represented Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s state-oil company PDVSA, lobbying for their American subsidiary Citgo Petroleum Corp. of Houston.

A month ago, CBS News reported that PDVSA arranged a $1.5 billion dollar loan from Russia’s Rosneft to avoid default on its other obligations, with 49.9% of the struggling company pledged as collateral. Unusually, the loan was booked in Delaware where Citgo is based, which means that US sanctions would — unless unexpectedly rolled back — prevent Rosneft from repossessing PDVSA’s Citgo shares.
PDVSA’s credit rating was just cut to junk status and ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has called their recent financial maneuverings “tantamount to default,” which means that a default and repossession event in the near future by Citgo to Rosneft is not unlikely.

Even if sanctions were released and PDVSA defaults, surrendering half of Citgo, because it would cede ownership of almost 5% of America’s oil refineries to Russia (not to mention Citgo’s gas stations and distribution deals), then Rosneft would need approval from CIFUS — a board of Cabinet members who review and must approve any major foreign asset purchases in the US — to sign off on the deal.
Rudy Giuliani’s extremely political list of foreign clients as a lawyer, a law partner or consultant is massive, global and chock full of terrorists, oligarchs and other infamous characters.
Here’s a small sample:
The former prosecutor has represented an Iranian group Mujahedin e-Khalq, that was closely affiliated with Sadaam Hussein.

Rudy Giuliani represents an Iranian terrorist group at the UN in 2012.
Giuliani gave a controversial speech in 2012 at the United Nations in New York, that some believe violated US sanctions against aiding terrorists. He’s also gone to Singapore to lobby for a casino for clients with North Korean connections.

Giuliani Partners listed TransCanada as a client in 2008, the company’s Keystone XL pipeline caused a nearly decade-long fight, but Donald Trump approved it quickly this year after President Obama declined the project, leading to a massive lawsuit against taxpayers, that the new President’s actions might have lost.
Rudy Giuliani has also represented Fox News, the government of Saudi Arabia and UST Tobacco.
And let’s not forget Guiliani’s lobbying in 2004 for private prison operator Cornell Company — whose financing caused former Republican House Majority Leader Tom Delay to be indicted — that was eventually bought by the public company Geo Group in 2010.

Bracewell changed its name when Rudy Giuliani joined the firm — concurrent to opening a Manhattan office to expand its practice which focuses on coal, natural gas and oil transactions — in a major push to use the exposure and political cover generated by its newest partner to vastly expand its business.
Notably, Giuliani’s former law firm did something unexpected for a law office in 2012.
That year, Bracewell & Giuliani it announced that its client Chesapeake Energy had closed an energy deal with Shell Oil

Later the Dutch oil conglomerate announced that they were also advised in a transaction with Chesapeake by… Bracewell & Giuliani.

Legal ethics typically prevent one firm from working on both sides of any transaction, but apparently those rules don’t apply to Rudy Giuliani’s former partners.

Rudy Giuliani went from being a vocal fan of Vladimir Putin since 2014, and the Donald Trump’s top surrogate — under formal consideration for the high office Secretary of State in November — to hiding under a rock ever since the Trump Russia dossier was published in January, making just a single appearance on Fox News to crow about influencing the Muslim Ban, which subsequently failed because of his racist comments.

Ironically, it was Rudy Giuliani who indicted the founder of Rosneft’s other new shareholder Glencore in 1983, because Marc Rich’s business evaded US sanctions.

But the former New York Mayor hasn’t retired, and he’s still taking more on more infamous foreign business arrangements — including his most recent job with Greenberg Traurig.

That job required Giuliani to fly for a meeting with Turkish autocrat Reçep Erdogan — to represent a Turkish gold trader accused of violating US sanctions.
But Giuliani hasn’t appeared in the mainstream media since the end of January when he bragged on Fox News about helping the Trump regime craft it’s unconstitutional Muslim Ban.

Former Bill Clinton White House staffer says that Rudy is asking prosecutors to cut a deal, but not getting a favorable response.
The rumor mill believes that Giuliani is in the FBI’s crosshairs and that his former protege James Comey has a smoking gun so obvious that he won’t give Rudy protection in exchange for testimony.
Internationally known American hacker The Jester recently said on Twitter that, “Rudy ‘Cyberman’ Giuliani is apparently in a legal quagmire and is desperate to ‘make a deal’. Comey isn’t interested.”
It’s impossible to know the validity of The Jester’s statement, but it is a fact that Trump’s former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort has said that he is registering as a foreign agent this week.

Manafort’s former partner Rick Davis was part of the Trump Campaign through election day — who served as John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign manager —and was also deeply involved in one of the specific transactions leading Trump’s former campaign manager to register as a Ukrainian foreign agent.

Public FBI activity and statements from former campaign advisors about wrongdoing related to foreign agents have steadily increased since FBI Director James Comey revealed the extent of his agency’s investigation last month.

The FBI Is Targeting Some Of Trump’s Known Associates
Ex-CIA Director James Woolsey recently told the Wall Street Journal that he attended a meeting with disgraced former-Trump NSA Gen. Mike Flynn, where he discussed circumventing legal due process to carry out an extraordinary rendition of Turkish President Erdogan’s political enemy Fethullah Gulen.
A week later, the FBI raided Woolsey’s casino in Saipan, which is located in a strip mall between a laundromat and a cellphone shop and rakes in massive amounts of cash, more than even the high stakes tables Chinese gamblers prefer in nearby Macao.

The South Pacific island of Saipan is a US Territory with about 50,000 residents, who just legalized casino gambling in 2014.
Woolsey’s casino was run by the former President of Trump’s casino empire.
It would seem that these two events are not disconnected, but rather show that Woolsey may be cooperating with authorities.

Also, the FBI recently conducted a massive arrest of New York mobsters with known ties to former Trump Organization senior advisor Felix Sater — himself a convicted racketeer who worked with both the Bonanno Family (who was targeted).

It’s uncertain if those arrests are directly related to the Trump Russia investigation, but Democratic Coalition Senior Advisor Scott Dworkin indicated that sources on capitol hill knew about the raid, and that it was connected to the President.

What is absolutely certain, is that Giuliani’s website has vanished since January 11th, after Trump named him Cyber Security Advisor in the wake of the Trump Russia dossier release, and after the media ripped both of them apart after discovering how horrifically un-secure his website was in all respects.
Rudy Giuliani made numerous highly unusual statements during the 2016 campaign, including sharing knowledge about Russian cyber attacks before they happened and bragging that he had foreknowledge of the FBI Director’s October surprise letter.
If he’s ultimately implicated in the Trump Russia Dossier, that should come as no surprise.
He’s been an international oil lawyer and security consultant to terror funders and consultant to oligarchs ever since leaving public office.

Giuliani has all of the relationships, and all of the connections to bring together disparate parties in a massively global real estate deal.
The former Mayor is a voluble speaker, filled with opinions and alternative facts, which makes his utter silence for the last three months even more remarkable.

When will Rudy Giuliani break his silence about the Trump Russia dossier and what was his true role in the Trump campaign?

Rudy Giuliani left Bracewell & Giuliani last year, which removed his name from the firm, and joined Greenberg Traurig as Senior Advisor to the Executive Chairman and as the Chair of the Cybersecurity, Privacy and Crisis Management Practice.

Now that the FBI’s Trump Russia investigation seems to be reaching critical mass, he’s going to be practicing Crisis Management full time, very soon.
His assistant at Greenberg Traurig did not answer a call seeking comment for this story or return voicemail at the time of publication.
https://thesternfacts.com/the-trump-rus ... 53876e789e



INDICTED Turkish Minister Former General Manager...GIULIANI?
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40682&p=643336&hilit=Giuliani#p643336
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Saudi Arabia arrests princes, ex-ministers anti-corrupti

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 07, 2017 9:20 am

Lebanon PM under house arrest in Saudi Arabia: pro-Hezbollah paper
Reuters Staff
3 MIN READ
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Saad al-Hariri, who quit as Lebanese Prime Minister in a weekend broadcast from Saudi Arabia, has been held under house arrest in the kingdom, a pro-Hezbollah daily said on Tuesday citing unnamed sources.

Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri is seen at the governmental palace in Beirut, Lebanon October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Hariri’s office and Saudi-owned media said he flew to the UAE, a Saudi ally and fellow Gulf monarchy, on Tuesday. Aides to Hariri, Lebanon’s most influential Sunni politician and a close Saudi ally, have denied claims that he was detained.

Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar, which is aligned with the Shi‘ite militant group and political movement Hezbollah, said Hariri “was placed under house arrest hours after arriving in Riyadh last Friday” and had remained in detention since.

On Monday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir dismissed as “nonsense” allegations that the kingdom forced Hariri to resign, and said he was free to leave at any time.

Speculation in Lebanon over Hariri’s status continued even after Saudi media showed him meeting with King Salman and reported him leaving for the UAE.

Hariri’s resignation has thrust Lebanon back onto the frontline of the rivalry between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi‘ite Iran that has also wrought upheaval in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain.

The coalition government, which Hariri’s shock resignation collapsed, included Iran-backed Hezbollah.

His declaration came as Saudi Arabia undertook an anti-corruption purge in which royals, ministers and investors have been arrested as the putative next king tightens his grip on power.

In a dramatic escalation of the crisis, Saudi Arabia accused Lebanon on Monday of declaring war because of aggression by Hezbollah.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah accused Riyadh last week of forcing Hariri to step down, and said there were “legitimate questions” over whether he had been detained.

The al-Akhbar newspaper said that a Saudi security team had been supervising Hariri, citing unnamed sources close to him. The prime minister, whose family made their fortune in the Saudi construction industry, had very limited access to his phones, it said on Tuesday.

Fouad Siniora, a former prime minister and senior member of Hariri’s political party, said Hariri would return to Lebanon.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-leban ... SKBN1D71CC


‘Game of Thrones’ Comes to Saudi Arabia
By ELLIOTT ABRAMs
NOV. 6, 2017

King Salman of Saudi Arabia, left, speaks with his son the crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, in Riyadh, in May 2012. Prince Mohammed, who has spoken of modernizing Saudi Arabia, announced the arrests of 11 of his princely cousins over the weekend. Credit Hassan Ammar/Associated Press
Over the weekend, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia announced the arrests of 11 of his princely cousins, among them some of the kingdom’s most prominent businessmen; he also announced several dramatic changes to top government ministries, including the creation of a powerful new anticorruption committee. Why? Was it a coup? The response to a failed coup? Some kind of purge?

The background to these events is the continuing centralization of power in the hands of the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who is one of King Salman’s sons. Over the past two years he has taken over most of the key economic and security posts and has clearly emerged as the most important operator in the government. The crown prince is also deputy prime minister (under the king, who is also prime minister) and minister of defense. All this at the age of 32.

This steady seizure of power has given rise to resistance within and outside the royal family, and Mohammed bin Salman’s elevation to crown prince was not unanimously supported when the top royal princes met to approve it. In the Saudi system, power has been passed among the sons of the founder of the modern Saudi kingdom, known as Ibn Saud, since his death in 1953. That made the king more primus inter pares than absolute monarch. One king was removed by his brothers (Saud, in 1964), and the system has permitted fiefs: The late King Abdullah was head of the National Guard for decades, and his son Miteb bin Abdullah took it over after his death; the late Prince Nayef served as minister of interior for 37 years and his son came after him; the late Prince Sultan was minister of defense for nearly a half century, and his son Khalid was his deputy.

Crown Prince Mohammed is putting an end to all that, taking some of those posts himself and removing others from the seemingly permanent control of any one branch of the family. All power is going to his branch — to his father, himself and his own allies; one brother is now the new Saudi ambassador to the United States.

Among the most notable moves was the removal of Prince Miteb — son and close adviser of Salman’s predecessor, the late King Abdullah — as head of the National Guard. You don’t need to be addicted to “Game of Thrones” to see the logic in that move: don’t allow a potential rival to keep his hands on a major locus of military power in the kingdom. Similarly, the arrest of perhaps the kingdom’s richest man, the billionaire international investor Alwaleed bin Talal, will both clip his wings and send a message that no one is beyond reach.


It was possible to pass the post of king from brother to brother in order of age when there were only 36 brothers who lived to adulthood, and that is what the Saudis have been doing since 1953 until King Salman’s accession to the throne in 2015. It will not be possible to govern that way in Crown Prince Mohammed’s generation, where there are literally hundreds of eligible princes. He may wish to establish a single line of succession, including only the descendants of his father, King Salman. To do that will require raw power.

Recently I asked a Saudi friend why Salman chose Crown Prince Mohammed as his successor, given that he is not his oldest son. The answer: “The King thinks Mohammed is the toughest. He’ll pull the trigger when he needs to.” This weekend, he did just that.

But why take such rapid action rather than a slow and steady series of changes? The answer is not yet clear. Some Saudi watchers believe that a coup attempt was uncovered or had begun, and that Crown Prince Mohammed crushed it. All those suspected of being involved are now being purged. A helicopter crash on Sunday near the border with Yemen killed one Saudi prince and several other officials, leading some to speculate if this was truly an accident. Meanwhile those arrested are being detained at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. Only in Saudi Arabia could a Ritz-Carlton pass for a jail.

Another theory suggests that King Salman, who is 81 and reportedly not in the best of health, may soon abdicate, and Crown Prince Mohammed is acting now while his father is king by removing rivals and critics.

Is this centralization of power a good thing for the United States, or even for Saudi Arabia? That question will best be answered retrospectively, in about a decade. What’s clear now, though, is that Crown Prince Mohammed has announced ambitious economic and social changes, from allowing women to drive and mix with men in sports stadiums, to selling off a part of the kingdom’s key asset, the Aramco oil company, to challenging the ideology of the Wahhabi clerics. He appears to believe that such moves require sheer power, both to overcome resistance and to move the kingdom’s poorly educated and youthful population (roughly half are under the age of 25) of 33 million into the 21st century.

Crown Prince Mohammed has spoken of a more modern Saudi Arabia, at least when it comes to the role of religion and the rights of women. Last month he called for “a moderate Islam open to the world and all religions.” But political liberalization is not in the cards. Indeed, a serious crackdown has been underway for the last two years, including lengthy prison terms for tweets that criticized the Saudi authorities. The message from the palace is clear: get on board or pay the price. That message applies not only to commoners, but to the entire royal family.

Few were in doubt about Crown Prince Mohammed’s ambition. Now there will be equal certainty about his determination. Those who think he’s going to fail, or hope he does, are on notice. This modernizer thinks the path forward is an absolute monarchy. Get out of his way.



Saudi Arabia wasn’t always this repressive. Now it’s unbearable.
By Jamal Khashoggi September 18

President Trump shakes hands with now-Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in March at the White House in Washington. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
Jamal Khashoggi is a Saudi journalist and author.

When I speak of the fear, intimidation, arrests and public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to speak their minds, and then I tell you that I’m from Saudi Arabia, are you surprised?

With young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s rise to power, he promised an embrace of social and economic reform. He spoke of making our country more open and tolerant and promised that he would address the things that hold back our progress, such as the ban on women driving.

But all I see now is the recent wave of arrests. Last week, about 30 people were reportedly rounded up by authorities, ahead of the crown prince’s ascension to the throne. Some of the arrested are good friends of mine, and the effort represents the public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to express opinions contrary to those of my country’s leadership. The scene was quite dramatic as masked security men stormed houses with cameras, filming everything and confiscating papers, books and computers. The arrested are accused of being recipients of Qatari money and part of a grand Qatari-backed conspiracy. Several others, myself included, are in self-exile and could face arrest upon returning home.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman elevated his son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to become crown prince and ousted his nephew, Mohammed bin Nayef, from the royal succession line. Here's what you need to know. (The Washington Post)
It anguishes me to speak with other Saudi friends in Istanbul and London who are also in self-exile. There are at least seven of us — are we going to be the core of a Saudi diaspora? We spend endless hours on the phone trying to understand this wave of arrests that have included my friend, businessman and thoughtful Twitter personality Essam Al-Zamil. It was just last Tuesday that he returned home from the United States, having been part of an official Saudi delegation. That is how breathtakingly fast you can fall out of favor with Saudi Arabia. It is all quite shocking. But this has not been business as usual in my country.


In 2003 and again in 2010, I was fired from my job as editor in chief of a “progressive” paper, Al-Watan. During the years in between, I served as media adviser to Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to Britain and then the United States. Perhaps it seems odd to be fired by the government and then serve it abroad. Yet that is truly the Saudi paradox. In the starkest terms, Saudi Arabia is trying to moderate the extreme viewpoints of both liberal reformers and conservative clerics. And the arrests span that spectrum.

Why would this climate of fear and intimidation be so prevalent when a young, charismatic leader is promising long-awaited reforms to spur economic growth and diversify our economy? The crown prince is popular, and his reform plan was supported by most of the 30 clerics, writers and social media superstars who were rounded up in the middle of the night.

In recent months, Saudi Arabia has instituted several new and extreme policies, from full-throated opposition of Islamists to encouraging citizens to name others to a government blacklist. Those arrested were on that list. Columnists close to the Saudi leadership repeatedly demanded that Islamists be “eradicated.” It’s no secret that the crown prince despises the Muslim Brotherhood, yet it is actually a strange contradiction to identify a person as a Muslim Brotherhood activist. I always found it ironic when a Saudi official bashes Islamists, given that Saudi Arabia is the mother of all political Islam — and even describes itself as an Islamic state in its “ Higher Law.” (We avoid the term “constitution” because of its secular interpretation and often say that the Koran is our constitution.)


Regardless of who is being targeted, this is not what Saudi Arabia needs right now. We are going through a major economic transformation that is supported by the people, a transformation that will free us from total dependence on oil and restore a culture of work and production.

This is a very painful process. Mohammed bin Salman is best served by encouraging constructive, diverse opinions from public figures such as Essam and other economists, clerics, intellectuals and business people who have instead been swept up in these arrests.

My friends and I living abroad feel helpless. We want our country to thrive and to see the 2030 vision realized. We are not opposed to our government and care deeply about Saudi Arabia. It is the only home we know or want. Yet we are the enemy. Under pressure from my government, the publisher of one of the most widely read Arabic dailies, Al-Hayat, canceled my column. The government banned me from Twitter when I cautioned against an overly enthusiastic embrace of then-President-elect Donald Trump. So I spent six months silent, reflecting on the state of my country and the stark choices before me.


It was painful for me several years ago when several friends were arrested. I said nothing. I didn’t want to lose my job or my freedom. I worried about my family.

I have made a different choice now. I have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice. To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison. I can speak when so many cannot. I want you to know that Saudi Arabia has not always been as it is now. We Saudis deserve better.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/glo ... 3d9961e98f


Saudi corruption case spells trouble for Trump

By David A. Andelman
Updated 12:43 PM ET, Mon November 6, 2017
Saudi Arabia: What's going on?


David Andelman: Recent arrests of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and others Saudis create a new challenge for Donald Trump
President will need to balance his friendship with Saudi King while advocating for US business interests and free expression
David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN and columnist for USA Today, is the author of "A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today." He formerly served as a foreign correspondent for The New York Times in Asia and Europe and Paris correspondent for CBS News. Follow him on Twitter @DavidAndelman. The views expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN)Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, as I realized from the first visit I paid him nearly a decade ago, lives in a world unto itself. In his sprawling desert retreat outside the capital of Riyadh, satellite downlinks assure CNBC is visible as he welcomes guests to lavish feasts laid out on carpets scattered across the sands. Behind him in his well-appointed office is a wall of logos of the myriad companies, the bulk of them American-based, whose shares form the foundation of his vast wealth -- the largest in Saudi Arabia and at $18.7 billion, the 45th largest in the world, according to Forbes.

The prince, like many of his global counterparts, has pledged to donate his entire wealth to charity before he dies (he is now 62). But none of this -- not his generosity, his power, his friendships with the CEOs of the many companies where he is the largest or among the largest single shareholder, from Citibank to Twitter -- prevented him from being summarily seized Saturday night, along with at least 16 other princes and top officials. Each was charged with the vague and still unelaborated crime of "corruption."
It was a stunning, even shattering, move that speaks yet again to the unfettered power of the kingdom's ruling monarch and his tight-knit family. Above all, it is an enormous and direct challenge to Donald Trump, who has repeatedly proclaimed his deep affection for and alliance with King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, and especially his son and heir-apparent, 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is believed to have been behind this weekend's roundup.

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While the Saudi kingdom maintains that the arrests are part of a larger investigation into corruption, it's hard not to wonder if Alwaleed's mouth -- rather than his financial transactions -- is to blame for his current predicament. The prince, who is more moderate than the ruling leaders, has challenged them on a variety of issues, including the ban on women driving (years before it was lifted).
The right to speak out in such a fashion has hardly been recognized broadly in Saudi Arabia, but should be the focus of Trump, who will have to balance his larger political and economic interests in Saudi Arabia -- including his latest push to have the monarchy list its oil company, Aramco, on the New York Stock Exchange -- with a broad defense of both free expression and a prince with strong business ties to the United States.
To complicate matters, Trump does not have the best relationship with Alwaleed. He has sparred with the prince, going back to when the prince and a group of investors bought New York's Plaza Hotel from Trump. The prince even went as far as to call Trump, in a 2015 tweet, "a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America."
The question is how long will it be before Citigroup Chairman Michael O'Neill, News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch, Disney's Michael Eisner, Apple's Tim Cook or Twitter's Jack Dorsey get on the phone to Trump and ask him to intercede with his great friend, the King?
Extremist funding over, says Saudi prince

Extremist funding over, says Saudi prince 09:13
Through the years, Alwaleed has developed close personal relationships with the leaders of many of these companies, particular Citigroup. Alwaleed is especially close to former Citigroup Chief Executive Sanford Weill, a relationship dating back to the 1990s when the prince began investing in Wall Street. And, as Alwaleed told me, he has come to the aid of several of these CEOs in boardroom battles. It's not unreasonable to assume they might now return the favor.
It's unlikely Alwaleed, who happens to be one of many nephews of the King, or any of his cellmates, will stand trial any time soon. While there is a court system and judiciary, the King sits at the top and has the final say in all cases. Moreover, in announcing the arrests, Saudi state media pointed out that charges were actually brought by a new anti-corruption committee, led by the crown prince, which is empowered to investigate, arrest, ban from travel or freeze the assets of anyone it unilaterally deems corrupt.
And how long before the House of Saud moves in to pillage Alwaleed's vast holdings? In the last year alone they have swung to a profit of 247.6 million riyals ($66 million) from a loss of 355 million riyals ($95 million) on a 76% rise in revenues. Meanwhile, Kingdom Holding's shares on the Riyadh stock exchange plunged as much as 9.9% in trading on Sunday (the first day of the business week on Islamic exchanges).
The crown prince and his father continue to insist that the new Saudi Arabia is a land of freedom and moderation, that the creation of the anti-corruption commission is merely a step toward the new look of Saudi Arabia. Already, they have brought an end to the historic ban on women driving, promulgated Vision 2030, which is designed to bring new jobs for the underemployed and overeducated who dominate the workforce. Last month, they even convened a vast "Davos in the Desert" investor conference with a glittering list of VIPs and live broadcasts from the convention floor by international media stars.

But can the royal family get out of its own way? Can the crown prince and his father withstand pressure for even greater changes from Saudi moderates like Alwaleed and restrain themselves from replacing veteran ministers with hand-picked cronies in the traditional Saudi royal fashion?
If Trump is sufficiently wise, and confident in his personal relationship with the King, he could serve as an important sounding board at what is clearly a crossroads for the oil-rich desert kingdom. He should examine how to make use of this relationship to press the broader values that America should stand for, including the reality of a rich and creative opposition. Such a Saudi Arabia could well be inoculated against forces of rebellion that have toppled so many of the kingdom's neighbors across the Middle East -- a good and reliable friend as well as a military ally.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/05/opinions/ ... index.html

Saudi Arabia accuses Lebanon of declaring war
http://nypost.com/2017/11/06/saudi-arab ... aring-war/
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Re: Saudi Arabia arrests princes, ex-ministers anti-corrupti

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 10, 2017 1:22 pm

Saad Hariri’s resignation as Prime Minister of Lebanon is not all it seems
He certainly did not anticipate what happened to him. Indeed, Hariri had scheduled meetings in Beirut on the following Monday – with the IMF, the World Bank and a series of discussions on water quality improvement; not exactly the action of a man who planned to resign his premiership

Robert Fisk Beirut @indyvoices

When Saad Hariri’s jet touched down at Riyadh on the evening of 3 November, the first thing he saw was a group of Saudi policemen surrounding the plane. When they came aboard, they confiscated his mobile phone and those of his bodyguards. Thus was Lebanon’s prime minister silenced.

It was a dramatic moment in tune with the soap-box drama played out across Saudi Arabia this past week: the house arrest of 11 princes – including the immensely wealthy Alwaleed bin Talal – and four ministers and scores of other former government lackeys, not to mention the freezing of up to 1,700 bank accounts. Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman’s “Night of the Long Knives” did indeed begin at night, only hours after Hariri’s arrival in Riyadh. So what on earth is the crown prince up to?

Put bluntly, he is clawing down all his rivals and – so the Lebanese fear – trying to destroy the government in Beirut, force the Shia Hezbollah out of the cabinet and restart a civil war in Lebanon. It won’t work, for the Lebanese – while not as rich – are a lot smarter than the Saudis. Every political group in the country, including Hezbollah, are demanding one thing only: Hariri must come back. As for Saudi Arabia, those who said that the Arab revolution will one day reach Riyadh – not with a minority Shia rising, but with a war inside the Sunni Wahhabi royal family – are watching the events of the past week with both shock and awe.


But back to Hariri. On Friday 3 November, he was in a cabinet meeting in Beirut. Then he received a call, asking him to see King Salman of Saudi Arabia. Hariri, who like his assassinated father Rafiq, holds Saudi as well as Lebanese citizenship, set off at once. You do not turn down a king, even if you saw him a few days’ earlier, as Hariri had. And especially when the kingdom owes Hariri’s “Oger” company as much as $9bn, for such is the commonly rumoured state of affairs in what we now call “cash-strapped Saudi Arabia”.

But more extraordinary matters were to come. Out of the blue and to the total shock of Lebanese ministers, Hariri, reading from a written text, announced on Saturday on the Arabia television channel – readers can guess which Gulf kingdom owns it – that he was resigning as prime minister of Lebanon. There were threats against his life, he said – though this was news to the security services in Beirut – and Hezbollah should be disarmed and wherever Iran interfered in the Middle East, there was chaos. Quite apart from the fact that Hezbollah cannot be disarmed without another civil war – is the Lebanese army supposed to attack them when Shia are the largest minority in the country (many of them in the army)? These were not words that Hariri had ever used before. They were not, in other words, written by him. As one who knows him well said this week, “this was not him speaking”. In other words, the Saudis had ordered the prime minister of Lebanon to resign and to read his own departure out loud from Riyadh.

I should add, of course, that Hariri’s wife and family are in Riyadh, so even if he did return to Beirut, there would be hostages left behind. Thus after a week of this outrageous political farce, there is even talk in Beirut of asking Saad Hariri’s elder brother Bahaa to take his seat in the cabinet. But what of Saad himself? Callers have reached him at his Riyadh home, but he speaks only a few words. “He says ‘I will come back’ or ‘I’m fine’, that’s all, only those words, which is very unlike him,” says one who must know. And what if Hariri did come back? Would he claim that his resignation had been forced upon him? Dare the Saudis risk this?

Saudi Arabia's crown prince: Country will return to 'moderate, open Islam'
He certainly did not anticipate what happened to him. Indeed, Hariri had scheduled meetings in Beirut on the following Monday – with the IMF, the World Bank and a series of discussions on water quality improvement; not exactly the action of a man who planned to resign his premiership. However, the words he read out – scripted for him – are entirely in line with the speeches of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman and with the insane President of the United States who speaks of Iran with the same anger, as does the American Defence Secretary.

Of course, the real story is just what is going on in Saudi Arabia itself, for the crown prince has broken forever the great compromise that exists in the kingdom: between the royal family and the clergy, and between the tribes. This was always the bedrock upon which the country stood or fell. And Mohamed bin Salman has now broken this apart. He is liquidating his enemies – the arrests, needless to say, are supposedly part of an “anti-corruption drive”, a device which Arab dictators have always used when destroying their political opponents.

There will be no complaints from Washington or London, whose desire to share in the divvying up of Saudi Aramco (another of the crown prince’s projects) will smother any thoughts of protest or warning. And given the smarmy reporting of the Crown Prince’s recent speeches in the New York Times, I have my suspicions that even this elderly journalistic organ will be comparatively unworried by the Saudi coup d’etat. For that is what it is. He unseated the interior minister earlier this year and now Mohamed bin Salman is getting rid of his opponents’ financial power.

But ruthless men can also be humble. Hariri was allowed to see the King – the original reason for which he believed he was travelling to Riyadh – and even paid a visit to the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates this week, an ally-nation of the Saudis who would prevent him jumping on a flight to Beirut. But why on earth would Hariri want to go to the Emirates? To prove that he was still free to travel when he cannot even return to the country which he is supposed to be ruling?

Lebanon is always going through the greatest crisis since its last greatest crisis. But this time, it’s for real.
Saad Hariri’s resignation as Prime Minister of Lebanon is not all it seems
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/leb ... 45636.html
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Re: Saudi Arabia arrests princes, ex-ministers anti-corrupti

Postby BenDhyan » Fri Nov 10, 2017 5:09 pm

Why Saudi Purge Signals War Footing

8 hours ago November 10, 2017

Mass arrests of senior royals, amid fear of assassinations, indicate that what is going on in Saudi Arabia is a far-reaching purge. The facade of a “corruption probe” – promoted in part by Western news media and US President Donald Trump – is a barely credible cover.

The cover is not just for a ruthless power grab within the desert kingdom by Saudi rulers, but a realignment that also puts the entire Middle East region on notice for more conflict and possibly even an all-out war with Iran. A war that the Israeli state and the Trump administration are enthusiastically egging on.

This move towards war with Iran could explain why the Saudi royals made a landmark trip to Moscow last month. Was it an attempt to buy off Russia with oil and weapons deals in order to free the Saudi hand with regard to Iran?

In typical fragmented fashion, Western media have tended to report the mass arrest last weekend of royal princes, ministers and business leaders, carried out under the orders of King Salman and his heir Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as a crackdown on corruption and business sleaze.

Omitted in media coverage is the significant wider context of the Saudi rulers moving at the same time to exert political control over regional politicians, as well as making sensational claims that Iran and Lebanon have “declared war” on Saudi Arabia by allegedly supporting a missile strike from Yemen.

The apparent forced resignation of Lebanese premier Saad Hariri last weekend after having been summoned to Saudi capital Riyadh provided convenient substance to Saudi claims that Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah were destabilizing Lebanon and indeed plotting to assassinate Hariri.

However, Hariri was just one of several regional political figures whom the Saudis were reportedly putting pressure on. Reports emerged that the ex-Yemeni president Mansour Hadi has been held under house arrest in his exile home in Riyadh. There were reports too of Syrian opposition figures being detained in Riyadh. And the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas was ordered to the Saudi capital. This suggests the Saudis are orchestrating a regional chorus line.

Furthermore, there were credible Israeli media reports that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv is coordinating with Saudi Arabia to support the latter’s accusations against Iran and Hezbollah of committing acts of war from Yemen by supplying missiles to the Houthi rebels.

Washington has also weighed in to support the Saudi claims that Iran is arming the Houthis in violation of a UN Security Council resolution. Referring to the missile strike on Riyadh international airport last Sunday President Trump said that “Iran took a shot at Saudi Arabia”. Then the US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley later in the week called for sanctions against Tehran, citing Saudi “evidence”. Iran has dismissed the claims as baseless, pointing to the Saudi air, sea and land blockade on Yemen as preventing any such weapons supply.

The power behind the Saudi throne, Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), the 32-year-old son of aging King Salman (82), has emerged as an ambitious autocrat who also harbors an intense hostility towards Iran. In several media interviews, the Crown Prince has disclosed an obsession with crushing Iran. This goes way beyond the usual sectarian Wahhabi antipathy of Saudi leaders towards Shia Iran.

Crown Prince MbS is playing a smart game to a degree. He has made a big media play on “reforming” Saudi Arabia from its fundamentalist social conservatism to become a seemingly more cosmopolitan society. The Crown Prince has pushed reforms giving Saudi women the right to drive cars, travel without male guardians, and enter sports stadiums. Hardly radical advances in gender equality. Nevertheless, MbS has ably projected himself with Western media assistance as something of a progressive reformer.

Those changes are but the veneer for ruthless ambitions and a hyper power-grab within the despotic House of Saud. The supposed “corruption probe” is another layer of varnish to conceal much more sinister developments.

Britain’s Guardian newspaper this week waxed lyrical over the mass round-up of senior Saudi royals and ministers describing it as a “revolution” carried out by the would-be reformer Crown Prince, placing the development in the context of minor liberalization of women’s rights.

Meanwhile, the New York Times offered an apologia for the “Saudi Corruption Crackdown” by saying: “Graft is so pervasive that any measures short of revolutionary change may appear to be selective prosecution.”

Such reporting serves as a distraction from the real power play at work and the grave regional implications.

For a start, the number of detained princes, as well as current and former government ministers, are in the dozens. The profiles of those arrested suggest a pattern that has more to do with eliminating potential rivals than with alleged corruption.

Potentially most sinister is that on the day of the mass arrests, a contender for inheriting the Saudi throne was killed in a helicopter crash. Prince Mansour bin Muqrin (42) was among eight officials who died when their chopper went down in southern Asir Province near the border with Yemen. Saudi media have not given any details about the cause of the crash. One might have expected the Saudis to lay the blame on Houthi rebels and, by extension, Iran. But no. The House of Saud and its media outlets have said little about the death of this senior royal. Significantly, too, the Houthi rebels and their media have said little about the incident. If there was a chance of the rebels being involved, one might expect them to prompt a propaganda coup claiming a spectacular blow against the Saudis whom they have been fighting a war against since March 2015.

The chopper victim Prince Mansour was the son of 72-year-old Prince Muqrin, who is one of the last surviving sons of the Saudi kingdom’s founder Ibn Saud. (He is a half-brother to the sitting King Salman.)

Prince Muqrin was also former head of Saudi state intelligence (2005-2012) before he was made Crown Prince in January 2015 upon the death of his brother, the late King Abdullah. In the arcane world of Saudi power inheritance, the throne has always passed between Ibn Saud’s sons, or from brother to brother. When Abdullah died in January 2015, the next in line was their brother Salman (the present king). After Salman, according to traditional succession rules, the next heir to the throne should have been Muqrin, who indeed was made Crown Prince in January 2015. However, three months later, King Salman demoted Muqrin as heir apparent. He was sidelined to make way for the emergence of Mohammed bin Salman, the son of the king, as Crown Prince. That marked an unprecedented rupture in Saudi royal tradition, and no doubt has left a seething resentment among the clans comprising the House of Saud.

Prince Muqrin and his lineage of six sons therefore can be seen as a dangerous rival to the ambitions of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. As his own father King Salman’s health declines, the next-in-line appears to be clearing the royal court of potential competition for the throne.

It is not yet known what actually happened to the helicopter ferrying Prince Mansour last weekend. But it seems more than a coincidence that the crash occurred on the same day as the arrest and round-up of several other senior royals. Two of those arrested were Prince Mataib bin Abdullah and Prince Turki bin Abdullah. They are the sons of the late King Abdullah, and like Prince Mansour, they are cousins of Crown Prince MbS, and therefore could potentially mount a challenge to his succession to the throne.

The arrests also targeted the heads of national security, the National Guard and Navy, as well as Western-connected Saudi media magnates Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal and Waleed Al-Ibrahim, who are major shareholders in 20th Century Fox, News Corporation, Apple, Twitter, and TV satellite companies. Those arrests suggest that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is trying to close down any backlash from within the Saudi security establishment, as well as shut off potentially negative media coverage.

Donald Trump immediately hailed the events in Saudi Arabia as a welcome clean-up against corruption. He said people had been “milking the country for years”.

There is little doubt that Saudi elites are generally up to their eyes in graft. The House of Saud and the country’s fabulously wealth oil industry are a byword for endemic corruption, bribery and racketeering. (Recall the British Al-Yamamah $60 billion arms and bribery scandal during the 1980s under the Thatcher government for example.)

So, for Trump and sections of the Western media to indulge the notion of a reforming Crown Prince overhauling endemic national sleaze is impossibly naive.

It also completely misses the point of how the Saudi rulers are gearing up for a regional war with Iran and via Lebanon by consolidating all power behind Crown Prince MbS and his anti-Iran obsession.

Trump and his business mogul son-in-law Jared Kushner have from an early stage gravitated to Crown Prince MbS for massive US arms sales and Saudi investment in the American economy. Only days before the Saudi purge, Kushner was on a low-key visit to Riyadh to meet with Saudi rulers. Trump also appealed last week to the Saudis to choose US stock markets for the much-anticipated share sell-off for Aramco, the Saudi national oil company, which is expected to fetch $2 trillion.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the architect behind the Saudi slaughter in Yemen, is positioning himself with total power in order to pursue his obsession of confronting Iran. That’s like pushing an open door when it comes to forming an anti-Iran front with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and the Trump administration. And for Trump there is also the added incentive of lavishing Wall Street by pandering to the Saudi despots.



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Re: Saudi Arabia arrests princes, ex-ministers anti-corrupti

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Nov 12, 2017 12:07 pm

Murder in The Hague: Saudi-Iranian Proxy War Heats Up

by James M. Dorsey

Shot dead this week on a street in The Hague, Ahmad Mola Nissi may have died the violent life he lived, but his murder suggests a possible retching up of the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran as well as a step towards Saudi-US-efforts to destabilize Iran by stirring unrest among its ethnic minorities.

A 52-year-old refugee from Iran in the Netherlands since 2005, Mola Nissi headed a militant nationalist group of Iranian Arabs that intermittently attacked targets in Khuzestan, Iran’s oil-rich province populated by a large Iranian Arab community. The targets of attacks in 2005, 2006 and 2013 included oil facilities, the office of the governor in the regional capital of Ahwaz, other government offices, and banks.

Mola Nissi and a second activist, Habib Jaber al-Ahvazi also known as Abo Naheth, survived an Iranian crackdown on the group, The Arab Struggle Movement, that seeks independence for Khuzestan, by escaping to Syria from where they found refuge in Europe.

Activists said they had since focussed primarily on media activism and fund raising, at times creating footage of alleged attacks involving gas cylinder explosives to attract Saudi funds.

No one has claimed responsibility for Mola Nissi’s killing and Iranian opposition sources blame the regime in Tehran. Some Iranian Arab activists, however, expressed surprise at the killing.

“I don’t believe the regime will do such a crazy, stupid crime in Europe that would severely damage the regime’s reputation. I personally don’t believe the regime wants to destroy its ties with the EU for such a person (Ahmad Mola),” one activist said.

Nonetheless, Mola Nissi was shot dead as he was preparing to establish a television station staffed with Saudi-trained personnel and funding that would target Khuzestan, a south-eastern province that borders on Iraq and sits at the head of the Gulf, according to activists.

The killing comes against the backdrop of an escalation in Saudi-Iranian tensions with the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the firing by Yemeni Houthi rebels of a ballistic missile at Riyadh’s international airport, publication of a blueprint to destabilize Iran using the Pakistani province of Balochistan as a spring plank, and a flow of funds to militants in the troubled Pakistani province. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman fueled the fire when he declared in May that the fight with Iran would take place “inside Iran, not in Saudi Arabia.”

Former Saudi intelligence chief and envoy to Britain and the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, who often serves as an unofficial voice of the Saudi government, twice in recent years spoke at rallies organized by the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, an exiled Iranian opposition group, that based itself in Iraq during the Saudi-backed Iraqi war against Iran in the 1980s. Prince Faisal told one of the rallies that “your legitimate struggle against the (Iranian) regime will achieve its goal, sooner or later. I, too, want the fall of the regime.”

Pakistani militants in the province of Balochistan have reported a massive flow of Saudi funds in the last year to Sunni Muslim ultra-conservative groups while a Saudi thinktank believed to be supported by Prince Mohammed published a blueprint for support of the Baloch and called for “immediate counter measures” against Iran.

Prince Turki’s remarks fit a pattern of Arab calls for independence of Khuzestan. Writing in 2012 in Asharq Al Awsat, a Saudi newspaper, Amal Al-Hazzani, an academic who has since been dropped from the paper’s roster after she wrote positively about Israel, asserted in an op-ed entitled “The oppressed Arab district of al-Ahwaz“ that “the al-Ahwaz district in Iran…is an Arab territory… Its Arab residents have been facing continual repression ever since the Persian state assumed control of the region in 1925… It is imperative that the Arabs take up the al-Ahwaz cause, at least from the humanitarian perspective.”

Eruptions of discontent in Khuzestan, particularly on soccer pitches when Asian competition matches are played against teams from the Gulf, have become a fixture in Khuzestan that for decades has been an overt and covert battlefield in the struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran for regional hegemony. Al-Ahvazi told online Arab nationalist Ahvaz.tv in 2015 that soccer protests were part of an “ongoing confrontation between demonstrators and the forces of the Persian occupation.”

Protests have focussed on identity, environmental degradation, and social issues. Iranian politicians warned of a “national threat” in February when riots erupted in 11 cities in Khuzestan after they lost power during a severe dust storm. The outages led to water shortages as water and wastewater treatment plants were knocked offline. Demonstrators chanted “Death to tyranny”, “We, the people of Ahwaz, won’t accept oppression” and “Clean air is our right, Ahwaz is our city.”

International human rights groups have long accused Iran of discriminating against Iranian Arabs even though many are Shiites rather than Sunni Muslims. Dozens of protesters were reportedly killed during demonstrations in Ahwaz in 2011 that were inspired by the popular Arab revolts.

“Despite Khuzestan’s natural resource wealth, its ethnic Arab population, which is believed to constitute a majority in the province, has long complained about the lack of socio-economic development in the region. They also allege that the Iranian government has engaged in systematic discrimination against them, particularly in the areas of employment, housing, and civil and political rights,” Human Rights Watch said at the time.

Mola Nissi’s assassination remains shrouded in mystery with no clear identification of potential suspects and no claim of responsibility. It raises, however, the spectre of both an escalation in the Saudi-Iranian rivalry and the possibility of it expanding beyond the Middle East itself. “The murder remains unresolved, but it doesn’t bode well and is hard to separate from what’s going on in the region,” said one analyst.
http://lobelog.com/murder-in-the-hague- ... -heats-up/
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Re: Saudi Arabia arrests princes, ex-ministers anti-corrupti

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 14, 2017 12:02 pm

Nasrullah: Saudi has declared war on Lebanon
By Juan Cole | Nov. 11, 2017 |

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –
Al Jazeera Arabic reports that Hassan Nasrullah, the secretary-general of Hizbullah accused Saudi Arabia of declaring war on Lebanon and on his party. He repeated his charge that Riyadh has abducted Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri and has forced him to announce his resignation in a bid to destabilize his country. He said that Saudi Arabia is instigating the world community against Lebanon, adding that he has evidence that the Saudi government requested Israel to strike Lebanon militarily.
For its part, Saudi Arabia called on all its citizens to leave Lebanon. Shortly thereafter a Saudi national was kidnapped for ransom in Beirut.
In a speech broadcast on television Friday evening, after he accused Saudi Arabia and its officials of declaring war on Lebanon and Hizbullah, he spoke of a Saudi attempt to impose a new president on Lebanon, replacing Hizbullah’s political ally, Michel Aoun. He said that Riyadh is also attempting to take away from Hariri his position of leadership of the Sunni “Future Party” so as to impose a new leader on it.
Nasrullah condemned what he described as an unprecedented naked Saudi intervention in Lebanese internal affairs and said that Saudi Arabia’s treatment of Hariri from the time he arrived at the airport in Riyadh is demeaning to every Lebanese citizen.
He said that Hariri is being held against his will and that he has been prohibited from returning to Lebanon. Nasrullah demanded that he be allowed to come back, and said that his resignation is unconstitutional and without legal force.
The Hizbullah leader said that Saudi Arabia is ready to pay Israel tens of billions of dollars if only Tel Aviv will launch a military strike on Lebanon. He said that in his view, however, a new Israeli war on Lebanon is unlikely. Whatever Saudi Arabia might do, he added, it won’t be able to finish off Hizbullah. He predicted Riyadh will fail in Lebanon, just as it has failed in Yemen. He said defiantly that Saudi pressure would never make Hizbullah change its stance that the Saudis are wrong to intervene against the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Nasrullah charged that at the end of the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006, Saudi Arabia pleaded with Tel Aviv not to halt the war until Hizbullah was wiped out.
He denied taking sides in the Gulf crisis, but did say that the Saudi failure to cow Qatar was of a piece with a string of Saudi foreign policy SNAFUs.
President Michel Aoun, in the meantime, has declined to accept Hariri’s resignation, saying he will wait for the prime minister to return to Beirut and then have him explain his reasons in person. Aoun met Friday with the charge d’affaires of the Saudi embassy in Beirut and informed him that the way Hariri resigned, by telephone from Saudi Arabia, is “unacceptabl.”
https://www.juancole.com/2017/11/nasrul ... banon.html


The Mystery Deepens Over Lebanon’s Prime Minister: Hostage or Free?

By Robin Wright12:04 A.M.

Saad Hariri, who resigned Saturday as the Lebanese Prime Minister, with King Salman, of Saudi Arabia.Photograph Courtesy Saudi Press Agency via AP
The Middle East is consumed with a real-life thriller over the fate of Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, who abruptly resigned—on a Saudi television station, on November 4th, after being summoned to Riyadh. Hariri cited fears of an assassination attempt and blasted Hezbollah and Iran for meddling in Lebanese affairs. Then, holed up in the kingdom, he went silent, even to his own Future Movement party back in Beirut. For eight days, the news dominated headlines, spawned conspiracy theories, deepened regional tensions, and even triggered fears of yet another war. The front page of a Lebanese tabloid ran a full-page photo of Hariri with the caption “Hostage.”
Hariri’s mysterious disappearance united Lebanon’s ever-squabbling political leaders. The Christian President, Michel Aoun, rejected the resignation unless Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, delivered it in person. In a televised speech, the Shiite leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said that the resignation was “illegal and unconstitutional” because it “was made under coercion.” Politicians from across Lebanon’s eighteen sects expressed suspicions about the implications for Hariri, the country, and the region. On Sunday, Beirut’s annual marathon turned into a kind of liberation rally for Hariri. Thousands of runners and spectators from different sects carried “Waiting for you” signs. Banners declared “Running for you.” Hariri had run in previous marathons.
Even the Trump Administration got involved. On Saturday, during the President’s Asia tour, the White House took time to issue a statement describing Hariri as “a trusted partner” of the United States. It called on “all states and parties to respect Lebanon’s sovereignty, independence, and constitutional processes.” The statement was widely interpreted as a rebuke of Saudi Arabia, a centerpiece of Trump’s Middle East policy, even as it criticized unnamed militias that “undermine Lebanese government institutions, or use Lebanon as a base from which to threaten others in the region,” an almost certain allusion to Hezbollah.
Hariri’s resignation came amid a sweeping power play by Saudi Arabia’s young Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to eliminate domestic opposition and strengthen the desert kingdom’s command in the Middle East. As part of the process, the autocratic monarchy has escalated a campaign against theocratic Iran, its regional rival. Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and the guardian of the faith’s holiest sites, in Mecca and Medina, is the centerpiece of the Sunni world. Iran has the world’s largest Shiite population.
As Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Hariri had come to symbolize compromise between the two sectarian adversaries. The son of a former Lebanese Prime Minister, who was assassinated in 2005, Hariri became Prime Minister a year ago, for the second time, in a deal that ended a two-year political crisis during which the country had no President.
In the 2016 deal, Hariri—a Sunni ally of Saudi Arabia, where he was born and his father made billions in construction—became Prime Minister. Aoun—a Maronite Christian, former Army general, and ally of Hezbollah—became President. Shiite Hezbollah, as in the past, won Cabinet seats. Hariri’s ability to navigate the treacherous sectarian map was reflected in the run-up to his resignation in his meetings with Saudi officials in Riyadh and Ali Akbar Velayati, the top foreign-policy adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whom Hariri hosted in Beirut. Hariri reportedly came away from the earlier Riyadh meetings feeling comfortable with the kingdom’s acceptance of the talks.
But the political realpolitik may have cost Hariri his job. He had been summoned to Saudi Arabia and then presented with a dictate to resign, senior diplomatic sources told me. The language was prescribed. He was prevented from returning to Beirut and his communications were restricted. Reuters reported that even his cell phone was confiscated.
The Trump statement, on Saturday, may have nudged the situation along. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis had spoken with their Saudi counterparts regarding the rapidly evolving crackdown in the kingdom and its regional entanglements, U.S. officials said. The evolving Saudi-Israeli alliance, nurtured by Trump, has been a backdrop to the current crisis. For decades, Lebanon has been a battleground for rival Middle East interests. Local media in Beirut have been rife with concern that Israel, now allied with Saudi Arabia, could confront Hezbollah, Iran’s biggest proxy in the Arab world, in Lebanon.
On Sunday, Hariri called a Lebanese reporter, who was en route to a vacation, to invite her to interview him in Riyadh for his party’s television station. Looking drawn, Hariri claimed that he was “free” to leave Saudi Arabia. “I was silent in order to allow people to absorb and reflect on the resignation and its repercussions,” he said. Hariri added that he might return to Beirut “within days” to fulfill the constitutional requirements of resigning—adding the caveat that “necessary security arrangements” had to be made first. He certainly has legitimate safety concerns. Hariri’s father, Rafiq, a former Prime Minister, was assassinated in a car bombing, in 2005, which launched Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution—a precursor to the start of the Arab Spring, in 2011.
“I am free to travel tomorrow if I wanted to,” Hariri said in the interview “But I have a family. I saw what happened when my father was martyred. I don’t want the same thing to happen to my children.” Hariri denied rampant reports of Saudi manipulation. “King Salman considers me like his son,” he said. “The Crown Prince has all the respect for me. The stability of Lebanon is an essential asset for King Salman and the Crown Prince.” He called his resignation “a positive shock. The danger in Lebanon still exists from several sources,” he added.
But Hariri’s language was vague, and the interview offered intriguing clues, such as the reporter’s note regarding breaking news of a major earthquake in Iraq—intended to show that it was happening in real time. She also asked about his Apple watch. Hariri is known for being a savvy techie. “Where is your Apple watch? You’re not wearing it?” the reported asked. Hariri replied, “It’s still here . . . still here.” At one point, Hariri appeared to be bordering on tears. “We are in the eye of the storm,” he said.
The interview did little to clarify the mystery. Some Lebanese channels refused to air it because of suspicions that the Prime Minister was speaking under duress. Hariri even suggested that he might rethink the resignation, after his possible return and following negotiations with his government peers—and if the government followed a policy of neutrality. The implication was a policy embraced and accepted by Saudi Arabia.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-des ... -interview
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Re: Saudi Arabia arrests princes, ex-ministers anti-corrupti

Postby 8bitagent » Fri Nov 17, 2017 6:58 am

Well I have to say, any hint of progress in womens/lgbtq/human rights in the Saudi kingdom is welcome news to me....as well as rooting out the Saudi elites behind 9/11 and funding Sunni Islamic jihad.....it sure seems like the main point of this big purge by the new young Prince leader of Saudi Arabia is meant to not just consolidate power; but be able to prosecute and engage in a full on war against Iran/Iran's allies
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
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Re: Saudi Arabia arrests princes, ex-ministers anti-corrupti

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 17, 2017 9:03 pm


Saudi offer in corruption crackdown: 'cough up the cash and go home'

Government demanding up to 70% of rich detainees’ wealth in return for their freedom, newspaper reports


Ian Cobain

Thursday 16 November 2017 13.49 ESTLast modified on Thursday 16 November 2017 17.00 EST

Authorities in Saudi Arabia are offering businessmen and members of the royal family detained on allegations of corruption an opportunity to pay for their freedom, according to media reports.

Around 200 princes, ministers, senior military officers and wealthy businessmen have been held in five-star hotels across the country since last week, many of them at the opulent Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh.

Quoting “people briefed on the discussions”, the Financial Times reported that the Saudi government was demanding up to 70% of the individuals’ wealth in return for their freedom.


If settlements are agreed, hundreds of billions of dollars would be diverted into the country’s depleted coffers. Saudi Arabia recorded a budget deficit of $79bn last year and low oil prices have pushed the country into a recession.
The arrests were ordered by King Salman via his son and heir, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Their crackdown appears to be popular with Saudis who believe their country is plagued by corruption among members of the royal family and well-connected businessmen.

The attorney general has said he is investigating allegations involving sums of at least $100bn. An estimated 1,700 bank accounts have been frozen.

Those detained include Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a billionaire who owns stakes in Citigroup and Twitter, who is a nephew of King Salman and who had publicly backed attempts to reform the country.

Others include Waleed al-Ibrahim, the founder of Middle East Broadcasting Centre, which owns the Saudi satellite television channel Al Arabiya, and Bakr bin Laden, chair of the Saudi Binladin construction group.


The businessmen in custody are being asked to hand over assets. Settlements for royals are likely to also include pledges of loyalty to Prince Mohammed, the adviser said.

The FT said many of those detained were keen to secure their release by signing over cash and corporate assets. It quoted one person involved in the negotiations as saying: “They are making settlements with most of those in the Ritz. Cough up the cash and you will go home.”

Royal family members have long received undisclosed monthly stipends from state coffers built up during years of higher oil prices. The government has been forced to introduce austerity measures since oil prices fell three years ago, reducing subsidies and driving up costs for average Saudi nationals.

Critics have said the crackdown amounts to a power grab by Salman, as it has been highly selective: many royals and businessmen have not been detained.

Those detained have been spared prison in an attempt to maintain the delicate consensual alliance between the many different – and often competing – branches of the royal family.

“He couldn’t have put them in the jail,” a senior official explained. “So this was the most dignified solution he could find.”

Other reforms being introduced include steps to limit the remit of the religious police, who have been stripped of their power of arrest and told they are being absorbed into the interior ministry, and the lifting of the ban on women driving.

The crown prince told the Guardian last month that he wished to “return Saudi Arabia to moderate Islam”, breaking the alliance between Wahhabi clerics and the country’s ruling elite.

He aimed to end the kingdom’s near total dependence on oil by sweeping away the resistance to change that inhibited the development of a more diverse and open economy.

Seventy per cent of Saudi Arabia’s population are under the age of 30. Over the next decade at least 5 million Saudis are likely to enter the workforce, posing an enormous problem for a government that does not currently have jobs to offer them.

The government is planning a new economic zone to be established on 300 miles of the Red Sea coast, in a tourist area that has already been earmarked as a liberal hub akin to Dubai, where male and female bathers are free to mingle.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... nd-go-home


NOVEMBER 17, 2017
The Exile of Saad Hariri

by ROBERT FISK

When I heard that President Macron was ready to whisk Lebanon’s kidnapped prime minister to Paris with his family – victims of the gentlest hostage-taking in the history of Saudi Arabia – I couldn’t but recall what Saad Hariri said to me a few years after he first became Lebanon’s premier in 2009. I was sitting in his office in his Koreitem Palace – a vast, ugly monster of a building not far from the Hamra district of Beirut – and I asked him if he liked being prime minister of Lebanon.

He had only two advisers with him. “I am following in my father’s footsteps,” he said repeatedly. He was talking about his father Rafiq, the former Lebanese prime minister murdered in Beirut four years earlier, in 2005. But he was always talking about his father’s footsteps and people mocked him for this. But really, I asked again, what did it feel like to be prime minister of Lebanon? His answer quite shocked me, though it should not have done.

“You know this is my duty,” he said. “But I miss Saudi Arabia. I miss being able to take my family out in the car and drive through the desert at night and feel the desert wind in our faces – and us, just alone. No policemen, no security, no soldiers.” Well, I guess that from now on, he’s going to associate Saudi Arabia rather than Lebanon with policemen, security and soldiers. But it was an interesting reflection on the Hariri family.

I knew his father rather better. When he was assassinated with 21 others by a suicide bomber on the Beirut seafront in 2005, I saw Rafiq Hariri’s body lying on the roadside. He was a plump man and I thought at first he was the man who sells thyme bread on the Corniche until I saw the hair over his collar. His socks were on fire. With a colleague, I had first met Rafiq Hariri not in Beirut but in Riyadh, the Saudi capital where his son is now incarcerated, albeit in the luxury to which the family was and still is accustomed.

The comparatively young Rafiq – this was in the 1990s, before he was prime minister – was sitting in his office complex, headquarters of the now bankrupt Oger company, indulging in the irritating habit so beloved of Arab businessmen: talking to advisers while glancing constantly at a vast television screen to distract him from the conversation.

Hariri had great ideas for Lebanon. He obviously wanted to rebuild the country after the civil war. So why live in Saudi Arabia, we asked? “Why not?” he asked. “This is a good country to live in. This is a great country – just providing you don’t get involved with politics!”

Ah, but that was the problem. Rafiq Hariri was always hobbled by Hezbollah’s growing political ambitions. He once expressed his fury to me after Hezbollah’s leader, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, decided to build a tomb for his martyrs opposite the entrance to the spanking new glass and steel airport which Hariri had built to the south of Beirut. “Can you imagine?” he asked. “This man was going to put the bodies of Hezbollah men killed by the Israelis right opposite the entrance to the international airport, the first thing tourists would see when they arrived.” Hariri stopped the plot.

The world – which then meant the United States – accused the Iranian-funded Hezbollah of murdering Hariri, and so when Saad became prime minister, he too feared the Hezbollah, though many (including myself) had doubts about just who his father’s murderers really were. And with Hezbollah’s ministers in the government – freely and fairly elected, we should add – Saad Hariri found himself in a different kind of danger when he immediately returned as prime minister last year. As a Sunni citizen as well as a Lebanese citizen, the Saudis expected him to tame the Shia Hezbollah. But he had to rule a united Lebanon, not lead it into another civil war.

So when 32-year old Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia tried to destroy the power of Shia Islam, Lebanon (and Hariri) were bound to be targets of this dangerous young man’s fury. The prince had tried to destroy Bashar al-Assad’s Shia regime. He failed. He launched a war against the Shias of Yemen. It turned into a disaster. He tried to economically strangle Qatar – because of its close relations with Iran – and liquidate the Al Jazeera channel, and he failed. So now he turned his massive irritation against Lebanon.

It looks as if this too will be a dismal failure – thanks partly to President Macron. And not least because Hariri also happens to be a French citizen, whom Macron can therefore justifiably stand up for. Macron wants Hariri’s wife and two children to accompany him to Paris – so there are no more hostages left behind. But there are. There’s his brother Bahaa, for a start.

Despite all its verbal frothing, the one thing the Saudis will not do is attack Iran itself. That would be far too frightening an enterprise for the Crown Prince to undertake. But it’s worth remembering how much Saad Hariri liked – and quite probably still does like – Saudi Arabia. As his father did. Not long after Saad expressed to me his longing to drive through the Saudi desert at night, far from Beirut, he also replied to a question of mine about his political ambitions: “Five years in Lebanese politics – and then I’ll be gone,” he said.

It was eight years before he was forced to read his “resignation” speech in Riyadh – and then he almost was “gone”. For it now transpires that a number of EU ambassadors in Riyadh seriously feared for Saad Hariri’s life after he read his infamous and scripted speech. Others fear for the future of the Saudi foreign minister and former Saudi ambassador to the US, Adel al-Jubeir, who must surely have tried to advise the Crown Prince not to coerce Hariri. If he gave such advice, it clearly went unheeded. When al-Jubair later appeared on television, his eyes – in the words of a close acquaintance of the Hariri family – “stood out on stalks”.

But Hariri himself remains dissatisfied with some of his closest advisers in his own Future movement in Beirut, which is itself funded by the Saudis. No one will say just whom he suspects of preparing to stab him in the back. Some might guess Fouad Siniora, the enormously gifted economist and academic usually regarded as a loyal friend – and certainly no Dr Faustus. I’ve always liked Siniora. He stood up for Hariri’s father Rafiq when Hariri enemies tried to suggest there had been corruption in Rafiq’s Lebanese government. But Beirut politics is even more slippery than the Saudi version – sometimes more dangerous, though that might soon change.

When Saad Hariri was taken from Riyadh airport by Saudi security men that first night in Riyadh, he at first found himself only a few hundred feet from the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton hotel in which dozens of princes, rivals of the Crown Prince, were already detained for “corruption”. He must have wondered if he was about to join them. Then, indeed, the freedom of the Saudi desert wind might not have seemed quite so attractive.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/11/17 ... ad-hariri/



EXCLUSIVE: Saudi torture victims include former king's son

Sources confirm Prince Miteb, son of late King Abdullah, is among six princes who needed hospital treatment following arrest in Saudi purge

Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, pictured in Paris in 2014 (Reuters)
David Hearst's picture
David Hearst
Friday 17 November 2017 12:25 UTC
Last update: Saturday 18 November 2017 0:05 UTC

Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, the son of the late King Abdullah who was once considered a future crown prince, was beaten and tortured, along with five other princes, when he was arrested and interrogated in Riyadh during the ongoing political purge in the kingdom, Middle East Eye has confirmed.

All six princes were admitted to hospital in the 24 hours following their arrest. One of the men was in such a bad condition that he was admitted to the hospital’s intensive care unit - treatment which occurs when there is a high risk to the life of a patient, such as organ failure, from the heart, lungs, kidneys, or high blood pressure.

Hospital staff were told that the injuries sustained in each case were the result of “suicide attempts”. All had been severely beaten, but none of them had fractures. The marks on their bodies were consistent with the imprints left by military boots.

READ MORE ►

EXCLUSIVE: Senior Saudi figures tortured and beaten in purge
At least 17 of those detained were taken to hospital, but the number maltreated in the purge ordered by the current Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is certainly higher, according to sources who MEE is unable to identify because of concerns for their safety.

MEE has learned that medical units have now been installed in the Ritz-Carlton hotel where the beatings have taken place. This is to prevent torture victims from being taken to hospital.

MEE has also learned that in addition to the Ritz-Carlton, the detainees were also held in two other hotels including the Courtyard, Diplomatic Quarter hotel which is across the road from the Ritz-Carlton.

Both the Ritz-Carlton and the Courtyard are run by the Marriott International hotel chain. A spokesperson for Marriott International told MEE on Friday that the Ritz-Carlton and the Courtyard, Diplomatic Quarter were “not operating as traditional hotels for the time being”.

According to a civil rights attorney in Houston, Texas, the hotels are only liable to Saudi Arabian laws.

"If there is a crime being committed, then that crime is governed by the country which you are in," Randall Kallinen told MEE.

Both hotels appeared to be booked out and not admitting guests for the whole of December, according to their websites on Friday.


Prince Miteb, who is 65, served as minister of the National Guard, a military force drawn from tribes loyal to the House of Saud whose main role is to protect the royal family, from 2013 until his arrest on 4 November.

Prince Miteb has a background in the military and was considered among the possible contenders to inherit his father's throne prior to the appointment of the current King Salman as crown prince in 2012.

MEE can also confirm that Prince Abdul Aziz bin Fahd, the son of the late King Fahd who was arrested after this year’s Hajj in early September, was admitted to hospital close to the time of his arrest, although his fate is still unclear.


Courtyard by Marriott Riyadh Diplomatic Quarter (Marriott)
The purge, conducted in the name of an anti-corruption drive, has also involved the freezing of around 1,700 bank accounts.

According to one US source, bin Salman has claimed he intends to collect $1 trillion from the princes and businessmen that he has arrested.

The Financial Times newspaper reported on Thursday that Saudi authorities were offering deals to detainees, including billionaire tycoons such as Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz, in which they would surrender up to 70 percent of their wealth in return for their freedom.
Image

The arrests, interrogation and mistreatment being conducted in hotels owned by a US-based chain with an international reputation has raised questions about how Marriott International has allowed its facilities to be used in such a way.

MEE asked Marriott International to clarify what its company policy was on allowing its premises to be used as detention facilities and asked for comment on allegations that detainees were being tortured.

A spokesperson said: "The Ritz-Carlton, Riyadh and the Courtyard, Diplomatic Quarter are not operating as traditional hotels for the time being. We continue to work with the local authorities on this matter.

"We remain in close contact with the guests and groups holding existing reservations; working with them to assist with their reservations and minimise disruption to their travel and event plans."

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclu ... -340914670
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Re: Saudi Arabia arrests princes, ex-ministers anti-corrupti

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 14, 2018 2:55 pm

Arabic press review: Saudi Ritz Carlton prisoner dies after torture


Saudi prisoner dies after being tortured

One of the Saudi prisoners at the Ritz Carlton has died under torture, according to London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi.

Major general Ali Alqahtani, who was detained in early November as part of an alleged anti-corruption drive, had been working in the royal guard forces.

He was the manager of the private office of Prince Turki Bin Abdullah, the son of former king Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz, according to the newspaper.

Alqahtani died on 12 December after being tortured with electric shocks, and his family struggled to recognise him after receiving his body, according to sources, the newspaper reported.

Erdogan and UAE minister in Ottoman history spat

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has summoned the Emirati charge d'affaires over a spat in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to the defence of an Ottoman commander, according to Arabi21.

Last weekend, the UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed shared a tweet which accused the Ottoman Empire of “stealing” the holy city of Medina, now in Saudi Arabia.

Erdogan responded that Fahreddin Pasha had defended Medina during World War I and did not steal it.

“You arrogant man, blinded by oil and money. Rude man, where were your ancestors when my ancestors were defending Medina?” Erdogan said on Thursday, addressing the UAE foreign minister.

He added: "Those who do know the history of Fahreddin Pasha and his defence of the city of Medina, are we to be abused by an insolent man who attacks Erdogan’s ancestors and is hostile to the extent of accusing them of theft, as this arrogant man did?"

Two Egyptian ministers survived assassination attempt

Military sources in Egypt have revealed that two government ministers were the intended targets of an attack on El-Arish Airport last Tuesday, which killed an army officer and two others, according to the Asrar Arabiya website.

The Sinai attack was an “assassination attempt targeting both the Minister of Defense Sedki Sobhy and Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar” who were both present at the airport at the time of the attack, the report says.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack.

The source said that the Intelligence services in Egypt linked the attack on El-Arish to the shooting down of a Russian passenger plane over the Sinai in 2015, also claimed by IS, a sign that “the terrorist group is currently able to penetrate all the airports in Sinai,” sources said.

Algeria contains crisis with Saudi Arabia

Algeria and Saudi Arabia have been embroiled in an escalating crisis over a photo deemed “insulting” to King Salman bin Abdulaziz, raised earlier in the week by sports fans in a stadium in the east of the country, in solidarity with Jerusalem, according to London-based newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika received the chairman of the Saudi Shura Council, Abdullah ibn Muhammad al-Sheikh on Wednesday evening, despite the fact Bouteflika, who has been ill since 2013, normally only receives foreigners who are also heads of state.

Algerian football fans raised a banner featuring half of King Salman's face and half of US President Trump's face with the tagline "opposite sides of the same coin” (Twitter)
The banner on display at a game in the city of Ain Melilla featured half of King Salman's face and half of US President Donald Trump's face with the taglines "opposite sides of the same coin” and “Jerusalem is ours” near an image of Al-Aqsa mosque, the newspaper reported last week.

Smell of death reeks in Raqqa

The smell of death has filled the municipal stadium - or the “Black Stadium” as it has been known since IS took it over - in the center of the city of Raqqa, under which IS militants had built a large prison, according to a report in the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al- Awsat.

For years, the cries which came out from its playground were not the sound of crowds, or of football fans cheering, the paper reported, but they were the groans of the people who were arrested by IS militants who brutally tortured them.

Asharq Al-Awsat said that it finally managed to enter the municipal stadium prison, which, it transpired, includes 12 large halls, three solitary confinement centers, an interrogation office, a secretary’s reception area, and an “Al-Ikhwa” (brothers) prison where IS militants themselves were imprisoned.
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/arabi ... 1383981136
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Re: Saudi Arabia arrests princes, ex-ministers anti-corrupti

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 05, 2018 7:00 pm

As predicted. Kushner gave the Saudis a list of ”enemies” to arrest. Clearly Trump authorized this divulging of classified information. He also likely tasked NSA & Treasury Intel to target those Saudi civilians for MBS.

Recall: Jared Kushner's unannounced Oct trip to Riyadh caught some intelligence officials off guard. “The two princes stayed up until nearly 4 am...planning strategy.” The following week, the crown prince launched his royal "purge."

EXCLUSIVE: Saudi crown prince bragged that Jared Kushner gave him CIA intelligence about other Saudis saying 'here are your enemies' days before 'corruption crackdown' which led to torture and death

Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman met with Jared Kushner in October
Salman has since bragged about using classified intelligence from Kushner as part of a crackdown on 'corrupt' princes and businessmen in Saudi Arabia
He said the intelligence from Kushner included information on those who were disloyal to Salman and who were his 'enemies', insiders tell DailyMail
Kushner's attorney's spokesman said it was 'false' that the president's son-in-law passed on secrets and that he was 'well aware of the rules'
The crown prince launched his crackdown on corruption in November, days after he met Kushner for talks in Riyadh
Hundreds were rounded up, including princes from rival parts of the Saudi royal family and some of the country's wealthiest businessmen
But the crackdown saw accusations of torture and at least one reported death
By Ryan Parry West Coast Correspondent For Dailymail.com and Josh Boswell For Dailymail.com

Published: 09:23 EDT, 5 April 2018 | Updated: 10:58 EDT, 5 April 2018

Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman bragged of receiving classified US intelligence from Jared Kushner and using it as part of a purge of 'corrupt' princes and businessmen, DailyMail.com can disclose.

The de facto ruler of the Middle East's largest economy is currently on a US tour which has seen him meet President Donald Trump in the White House, hold talks with a string of the country's richest and most influential people and book the entire Four Seasons in Beverly Hills for himself and his entourage.

Sources have told DailyMail.com that the prince – known by his initials MBS – has been boasting about his close relationship with the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, and the intelligence which he has told his circle Kushner passed to him.

Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has been boasting about his close relationship with the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner (pictured), sources tell DailyMail.com
Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has been boasting about his close relationship with the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner (pictured), sources tell DailyMail.com

Kushner was said to have a late night meeting discussing intelligence with Salman in October. Kusher and Salman are pictured above with Ivanka Trump at the Murabba Palace in Riyadh last May
Kushner was said to have a late night meeting discussing intelligence with Salman in October. Kusher and Salman are pictured above with Ivanka Trump at the Murabba Palace in Riyadh last May

Relationship: Jared Kushner took part in a lunch at the White House last week which his father-in-law threw for Mohammed bin Salman
Relationship: Jared Kushner took part in a lunch at the White House last week which his father-in-law threw for Mohammed bin Salman

The crackdown on 'corruption' in the Saudi kingdom was led by MBS and began in November, days after he had met Kushner for talks in Riyadh.

But it saw allegations of torture as hundreds were rounded up, including princes from rival parts of the Saudi royal family and some of the country's wealthiest businessmen.

DailyMail.com revealed a photograph showing the detainees sleeping on the floor of a ballroom at the Riyadh Ritz Carlton, and disclosed that some had been tortured.

The New York Times later reported that one of the detainees had died from his injuries.

Most are said to have reached 'settlements' with the Saudi government, and MBS himself boasted in a 60 Minutes interview that the government had regained at least $100 billion from them.

Kushner claimed through his attorney Abbe Lowell that it was a 'false story'.

Peter Mirijanian, Lowell's spokesman, said: 'The alleged exchange never happened. Mr Kushner was and is well aware of the rules governing information and follows those rules.'

Despite Kushner's denial sources have told DailyMail.com how MBS boasted in private that Kushner was the source of intelligence used in the round-up.

He also told members of his circle that the intelligence included information on who was disloyal to him. There is no way to independently verify the truth of the boast.

'Jared took a list out of names from US eavesdrops of people who were supposedly MBS's enemies,' said one source, characterizing how MBS spoke about the information.

'He took a list out of these people who had been trashing MBS in phone calls, and said 'these are the ones who are your enemies'.

The crackdown saw allegations of torture as hundreds were rounded up, including princes from rival parts of the Saudi royal family and some of the country's wealthiest businessmen, and brought to the Riyadh Ritz Carlton
The crackdown saw allegations of torture as hundreds were rounded up, including princes from rival parts of the Saudi royal family and some of the country's wealthiest businessmen, and brought to the Riyadh Ritz Carlton

DailyMail.com revealed a photograph showing the detainees sleeping on the floor of a ballroom at the Riyadh Ritz Carlton, and disclosed that some had been tortured. The New York Times later reported that one of the detainees had died from his injuries
DailyMail.com revealed a photograph showing the detainees sleeping on the floor of a ballroom at the Riyadh Ritz Carlton, and disclosed that some had been tortured. The New York Times later reported that one of the detainees had died from his injuries

'MBS was actually bragging about it in Saudi Arabia when it happened, that he and Jared sat up until 4am discussing things, and Jared brought him this list.'

The Riyadh source said: 'They sat for several hours together. They literally laid out the future map of the entire region, that's why they stayed up to the early hours of the morning from the afternoon before.'

The intelligence allegedly discussed during Kushner's visit to the Middle East last October was said to have came from U.S. wiretaps on conversations between Arab royals in hotels in London, in major U.S. cities and even on yachts docked close to Monte Carlo, a favorite playground of the super-rich.

A separate source told DailyMail.com that it was being said in the Gulf that the president's son-in-law took a copy of information from the daily intelligence briefing provided by the intelligence community to the White House, and shared its contents with MBS.

The intelligence named several family members who were opposed to his rise, it was said.

'Kushner got hold of an intelligence briefing,' said the Riyadh palace source, recounting the version which originated with MBS. 'At that time he had a high level of security clearance and had access to that. He copied it and provided its contents to MBS.

'The CIA are doing their job by briefing the president on what is happening internationally.

'This is a briefing by the CIA to tell the president that some members of the Saudi royal family are plotting in this and that country.

'Kushner took that part of the briefing and flew to Saudi Arabia to impress MBS.'

Salman is currently on a US tour which has seen him meet President Donald Trump in the White House and hold talks with a string of the country's richest and most influential people. He's pictured above with Microsoft founder Bill Gates at the Gates residence in Seattle on March 30
Salman is currently on a US tour which has seen him meet President Donald Trump in the White House and hold talks with a string of the country's richest and most influential people. He's pictured above with Microsoft founder Bill Gates at the Gates residence in Seattle on March 30

Salman (second from left) also met with Richard Branson, (left) Founder of Virgin Group, during a visit to Virgin Galactic in Mojave, California, on April 1
Salman (second from left) also met with Richard Branson, (left) Founder of Virgin Group, during a visit to Virgin Galactic in Mojave, California, on April 1

And on this final leg of the trip, which was his first since taking over as the de facto leader of the kingdom, the crown prince booked all 285 rooms of the Four Season in Beverly Hills
And on this final leg of the trip, which was his first since taking over as the de facto leader of the kingdom, the crown prince booked all 285 rooms of the Four Season in Beverly Hills

Trump thanks Crown Prince Salman for Saudi investments in US



The disclosure comes after The Intercept reported that Kushner had a late night meeting with Salman and discussed the names of Saudis who opposed his power grab.

MBS bragged to his closest regional ally, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed – the de facto joint ruler of the United Arab Emirates - and others that Kushner was 'in his pocket,' a source told The Intercept.

Access to the president's daily brief is closely guarded, but Trump has the legal authority to allow Kushner to disclose information contained in it as the president is the ultimate declassifying authority and legally free to do so at any time.

However if Kushner, 37, had passed on names to the Saudis, the move would be a stunning intervention by the US into the internal affairs of an allied nation.

If Trump's son-in-law, however, discussed the names with the Saudi prince without Trump's specific permission, he may have violated federal laws around the sharing of classified intelligence.

Kushner's access to intelligence is an issue which has come to bedevil the White House.

He has been unable to secure a permanent security clearance, for reasons which remain unknown.

In February chief of staff John Kelly moved to prevent any White House official with only interim security clearance from having access to top secret/sensitive compartmented information, meaning Kushner can only access 'top secret' material.

As a result he no longer had access to the daily intelligence briefing.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed it would not affect his ability to do 'the important work he has been do'.

Jared Kushner loses top secret security clearance in February


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... gence.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Don’t forget that.
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