Category Archives: KSA Saudi Arabia

Traveler from Saudi Arabia arrested at Detroit Metro with pressure cooker

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H/T M

Detroit News:

  • By Robert Snell
  • The Detroit News
  • Comments

    • Detroit — Federal agents arrested a Saudi Arabian traveler who arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport with a pressure cooker, a key component used in the Boston Marathon bombings last month.

    Hussain Al Kwawahir will be arraigned at 1 p.m. in federal court for allegedly using an altered passport and lying to a Customs and Border Protection Agent about the pressure cooker.

    Al Kwawahir arrived at the airport Saturday from Saudi Arabia, via Amsterdam, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in federal court.

    He told agents he was visiting his nephew, who attends the University of Toledo.

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‘Saudis arrested’ over Tanzania church bombing

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Telegraph:

 Four Saudi Arabian nationals have been arrested in connection with a bomb attack on a Tanzanian church that the country’s president has called “an act of terror”.

Four Saudi Arabian nationals have been arrested in connection with a bomb attack on a Tanzanian church that the country's president has called

Wounded churchgoers lie on the ground as Roman Catholic nuns run for cover after a blast at the St. Joseph Mfanyakazi Roman Catholic Church in Arusha, Tanzania  Photo: AP

Mike Pflanz
By , Nairobi and agencies

11:42AM BST 06 May 2013

The Vatican’s ambassador to Tanzania was at the Roman Catholic church in Arusha, which had just been built and was holding its first mass, when the bomb went off.

He was unharmed, but two people died and 30 were injured in the first significant such raid on Tanzania’s Christian community at worship.

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Two removed from Saudi diplomatic mansion in McLean after human trafficking accusations

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Now at last I understand this.

H/T Tundra T

WTOP.Com:

Thursday – 5/2/2013, 9:23am  ET

saudicompound3.jpeg

Suspected slavery at diplomatic mansion

WTOP’s Michelle Basch reports from McLean.

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slaves in saudi diplomatic mission in USA     

MCLEAN, Va. – Two domestic workers have been removed from a diplomatic mansion in McLean following accusations they were being held like slaves.

The gated compound on Orris Street is owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Armed Forces Office, according to real estate records.

A spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tells WTOP agents responded to the home Tuesday night and removed the two possible victims of domestic servitude. Fairfax County police also were called in to help.

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Saudi keeps ban on churches

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I think we need more multiculturalism not less. Let us take a page from the Saudi play book and not allow any mosques to exist in the western world.

Why would we allow Nazi or Shinto community centers to exist all over Canada etc. and even publicly subsidize them above and beyond even tax free status, while Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany was busy destroying any institutions other than their own as quickly as possible as a matter of sate policy. In the future, assuming liberalism survives at all, people will look back stunned that we facilitated Islam the way we do. They will think we must have been staggeringly stupid just the way most people think the Crusaders were savage, intolerant and vicious as opposed to fighting a defensive war against a manifest-destiny Islam.

H/T M

The Australian:

ULTRA-CONSERVATIVE Saudi Arabia will retain its longstanding ban on non-Muslim places of worship, Justice Minister Mohammed al-Issa said in comments reported by the Saudi media.

As Saudi Arabia is “home to the Muslim holy places, it does not allow the establishment of non-Muslim places of worship”, the Al-Hayat newspaper on Wednesday quoted Issa as telling European MPs in Brussels.

Saudi Arabia, home to the holy Kaaba – the cube-shaped structure at the Grand Mosque in Mecca towards which Muslims worldwide pray – has come in for repeated criticism for its ban on non-Muslim places of worship.

Although Saudi Arabia’s citizen population is Muslim, the kingdom is also home to millions of expatriates of various beliefs.

Unlike Saudi Arabia, the kingdom’s Gulf Arab neighbours allow the building of churches and the celebration of non-Muslim feasts.

 

S.Arabia: Saudi women don’t want to drive, Justice minister

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ANSA.It:

Other religions allowed, but no churches on land sacred to Islam

23 April, 16:53

(ANSAmed) – BRUSSELS, APRIL 23 – Saudi Arabian Justice Minister Mohammed al-Isa defended the kingdom’s human rights record at a hearing on Tuesday before the European Parliament’s foreign affairs commission.

”We respect freedom of opinion and human rights, so long as they don’t infringe on public order and the rights of others”, the minister explained. Other faiths are banned from building churches and temples in Saudi Arabia because it is ”a land sacred to Islam. Other uses would be unacceptable. It would be like building a mosque in the Vatican: it’s a question of principle”, the minister said. ”But this does not mean people aren’t allowed to profess other religions”.

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If – then I doubt it

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If this terrorist attack was done by Saudis, just like the last one was, I wonder if it will motivate the US gov’t to change this policy?

Investigative Project:

Special Travel Benefit for Saudis a “Slap in the Face”

IPT News
March 20, 2013

Saudi Arabia, the nation which produced 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks, is about to become one of a handful of countries whose travelers can bypass normal passport controls at major U.S. airports. Sources tell the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) that this will mark the first time that the Saudi government will have a direct role in vetting who is eligible for getting fast-tracked for entry into the United States.

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Authorities ID suspect as Saudi national in marathon bombings, under guard at Boston hospital

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NY Post:

  • Last Updated: 5:23 PM, April 15, 2013
  • Posted: 4:28 PM, April 15, 2013

AP

Police clear the area at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon.

 

Investigators have a suspect — a Saudi Arabian national — in the horrific Boston Marathon bombings, The Post has learned.

Law enforcement sources said the 20-year-old suspect was under guard at an undisclosed Boston hospital.

Fox News reported that the suspect suffered severe burns.

It was not immediately clear why the man was hospitalized and whether he was injured in the attack or in his apprehension.

The man was caught less than two hours after the 2:50 p.m. bombing on the finish line of the race, in the heart of Boston.

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Amnesty International actually looks at genuine maltreatment!

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Now this is a surprise. AI has mostly become a fairly corrupt and leftist organization that, among other things, equates Canada’s cutting of finding to left wing anti-Western Islamist orgs to genuine totalitarian denial of rights. As if left wings groups had a basic right to government funding.

But here they point at the KSA although I suspect not for the most important reason. It would be interesting to know what passes for due process in a nation that has the death penalty for ‘sorcery’.

Saudi court said to order criminal to be surgically paralyzed

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While this is somewhat reminicent of the Code of Hammurabi, it should be remembered that Hammurabi’s code was actually a step forward for the time. A way of limiting the response to an injustice, not a barbaric threat to potential criminals.

It is also interesting that the KSA has opted for this bit of legislation while ignoring things like due process and rational rules of evidence.

H/T Bear

Yahoo.Com

DUBAI (Reuters) – Amnesty International has condemned a reported Saudi Arabian court ruling that a young man should be paralyzed as punishment for a crime he committed 10 years ago which resulted in the victim being confined to a wheelchair.

The London-based human rights group said Ali al-Khawaher, 24, was reported to have spent 10 years in jail waiting to be paralyzed surgically unless his family pays one million Saudi riyals ($270,000) to the victim.

The Saudi Gazette newspaper reported last week that Khawaher had stabbed a childhood friend in the spine during a dispute a decade ago, paralyzing him from the waist down.

Saudi Arabia applies Islamic sharia law, which allows eye-for-an-eye punishment for crimes but allows victims to pardon convicts in exchange for so-called blood money.

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Saudi religious police lift ban on women on bikes (sort of)

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H/T Bear

Yahoo News

[…]

The Al-Yawm daily on Monday cited an unnamed official from the powerful religious police as saying women can ride bikes in parks and recreational areas but they have to be accompanied by a male relative and dressed in the full Islamic head-to-toe abaya.

[…]

The official says women may not use the bikes for transportation but “only for entertainment” and that they should shun places where young men gather “to avoid harassment.”

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Saudi Arabia beheads murderer… and then CRUCIFIES his body

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H/T UK Pete:

Daily Mail:

  • Mohammed Rashad Khairi Hussain was convicted of murder and sodomy
  • The Yemeni citizen had killed Pakistani national Pashteh Sayed Khan
  • Comes after human rights charities condemned the country’s practices

By Jaymi Mccann

PUBLISHED: 19:23 GMT, 28 March 2013 | UPDATED: 19:30 GMT, 28 March 2013

Saudi authorities have beheaded a murderer and crucified his body after he killed and raped a Pakistani national.

The kingdom’s interior ministry announced the execution, stating that the man had murdered and sodomised another male. Both actions are punishable by death.

‘The Yemeni citizen Mohammed Rashad Khairi Hussain killed a Pakistani, Pashteh Sayed Khan, after he committed sodomy with him,’ said a statement carried by state news agency SPA.

New measure: A committee based in the Saudi capital Riyadh (pictured) is considering dropping public beheadings because of a lack of swordsmenBeheading: The Yemeni citizen was beheaded and crucified for his crimes (Stock Image)

Hussain was also convicted of robbery and carrying out a series of attacks.

The execution, in the southern city of Jizan, was followed by crucifixion, a punishment used by the ultra-conservative country for serious crimes.

Syrian Jihadist Fighters Getting Western Weapons

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H/T Magic Martin

VOA News:

Syria's al-Nusra rebels posted this photo of its fighters using an M-60 anti-tank weapons March 24.
Syria’s al-Nusra rebels posted this photo of its fighters using an M-60 anti-tank weapons March 24.

TEXT SIZE
Jamie Dettmer
March 25, 2013

A Syrian rebel group the Obama administration considers a terrorist organization is managing to obtain modern anti-tank weapons meant for other groups fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad, according to regional experts.

The Jihadist Jabhat al-Nusra militia is managing to secure weapons being supplied by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to rebel brigades affiliated to the Free Syrian Army, the experts say. The Obama administration considers al-Nusra a terrorist organization because of suspected links with al-Qaida.

The weapons include the Croatian-made M79 portable 90 mm anti-tank gun and M60 recoilless anti-tank weapons. Regional experts say Saudi Arabia and Qatar had been supplying such weapons to rebel units more acceptable to the West, mainly secular or nationalist-focused groups such as the Free Syrian Army (FSA) brigades fighting to oust the Assad government.

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Saudi passenger demands air hostess be removed from flight

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H/T Fjordman

Digital Journal:

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By Katerina Nikolas
Mar 13, 2013 in World

A male Saudi passenger on a domestic Saudi flight demanded a female air hostess be removed from the plane as she was unaccompanied by a male relative.

Saudi Arabia may have taken a tentative step towards more rights for women by allowing female representation on the Kingdom’s Shoura Council, but attitudes in the male dominated country remain entrenched in the past.

Emirates 247 reported one unenlightened Saudi man on a domestic flight turned on the stewardess who was about to serve him, shouting “why are you here without a related male companion?”

He then demanded the stewardess, along with all other unaccompanied women, be removed from the fight. After his outburst delayed the flight for two hours it was the male passenger who was removed from the flight.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/345566#ixzz2OaO1K3N0

DHS questioned over decision to let Saudi passengers skip normal passport controls

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H/T Magic Martin

FOX News:

Published March 20, 2013

FoxNews.com

  • logan_security_102412.jpg

    Oct. 24, 2012: Passengers are scanned at a security checkpoint at Logan Airport in Boston. (AP)

A Department of Homeland Security program intended to give “trusted traveler” status to low-risk airline passengers soon will be extended to Saudi travelers, opening the program to criticism for accommodating the country that produced 15 of the 19 hijackers behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Sources voiced concern about the decision to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which issued a report Wednesday on the under-the-radar announcement — which was first made by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano after meeting in January with her Saudi counterpart. According to the IPT, this would be the first time the Saudi government has been given such a direct role in fast-tracking people for entry into the United States.

 

Saudi Arabia may stop beheading due to swordsmen shortages

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H/T Ted L

AHRAM:

Oil-rich kingdom mulls abolition of beheading in favour of firing squads for capital punishments due to reported shortages of government swordsmen, Saudi daily reports

Ahram Online , Sunday 10 Mar 2013
Saudi Arabia

Swordman prepares to behead convict in SAudi (Photo: Al-Ahram)

A joint Saudi committee composed of representatives of the ministries of interior, justice and health is mulling the replacement of beheading with firing squads for capital sentences due to shortages in government swordsmen, Saudi daily Al-Youm reported on Sunday.

The committee argued that such a step, if adopted, would not violate Islamic law, allowing heads – or emirs – of the country’s 13 local administrative regions to begin using the new method when needed.

“This solution seems practical, especially in light of shortages in official swordsmen or their belated arrival to execution yards in some incidents; the aim is to avoid interruption of the regularly-taken security arrangements,” the committee said in a statement.

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