Good to see the serious sentence but as we saw in the Lockerbie Bomber case, a British/UK sentence is not what it used to be, when the criminal is a connected Muslim.
BY Philip Caulfield NY Daily News:
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, October 20th 2010, 12:31 PM
Manservant Bandar Abdulaziz was killed in a frenzied attack by Saudi Prince Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser al Saud. The two were rumored to be lovers.
Saud Bin Abdulaziz Bin Nasir al Saud
A Saudi prince who brutally murdered his gay manservant — and alleged lover — was sentenced to 20 years in jail on Wednesday.
Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser al Saud‘s royal status failed to protect him from the prison time.
“No one in this country is above the law,” Justice David Bean said, according to The Associated Press. “It would be wrong for me to sentence you either more severely or more leniently because of your membership of the Saudi royal family.”
In a champagne- and Sex-on-the-Beach-fueled rage, al Saud bit and strangled 32-year-old Bandar Abdulaziz to death, London’s Daily Mail reported. The manservant’s body was found in a blood-spattered room at a posh London hotel in February.
Prosecutors painted the 34-year-old prince as a dashing playboy who pampered his manservant with booze, gourmet meals at fine restaurants, and erotic massages.
Staffers at the Landmark Hotel, where the grisly murder took place, told the court al Saud was gay and described him as “quite effeminate.”
Al Saud admitted to the killing, but denied the two were lovers.
Homosexuality is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, and officials and media outlets in the country have kept mum about the case.
The prosecution argued the two had a toxic and abusive love affair. They pointed to closed-circuit TV footage of the prince using Abdulaziz as a punching bag in an elevator a few weeks before the killing.
Al Saud, in white, was caught on camera beating Abdulaziz in a hotel elevator in London.
Al Saud was convicted of both murder and grievous bodily harm with intent. He stood with his arms crossed and displayed no emotion as the sentence was read.
“Beneath the surface this was a deeply abusive relationship which the defendant exploited for sadistic reasons, for his own personal gratification,” prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw said.
With News Wires Services
At best he will serve seven years and given his family probably less, of course if I was him I wouldn’t want to go back home where the religious police might manage to lay their hands on me.
This is a racist murder. Arab kills black man.
What! only 20yrs for a prince killing a ‘Queen’