Job Discussion Forums

[Pilot in Command]

...because if it is, then the Saudi government is about as low on the scale of humanity as it gets:

http://65.54.187.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=721e5cbd2696512b1a7d01744a395c9d&lat=1088028282&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2eworldtribune%2ecom%2fworldtribune%2fbreaking_5%2ehtml

[johnslat]

Dear Pilot in Command,
Well, perhaps others can connect. But this is all I get when I click on the link provided:

"Your email message has been idle and this link has become inactive. To access the link, close this window and return to your Message. Then click the browser's Refresh button or close your message and reopen it.

Rather an odd message.

Regards,
John

[justcolleen]

I get the same page, with the same verbage, as John.

I see that World Tribune is in the URL's address, but I can't find the article you're speaking of directly on that site.

Colleen

[justcolleen]

Is it this article?

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_5.html

Opposition: Saudi security knew Johnson's location

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Saudi opposition sources said Saudi security commanders knew of the location of Al Qaida chief Abul Aziz Al Muqrin at least three days before he executed a U.S. hostage.

The Washington-based Saudi Institute said Saudi authorities knew of the whereabouts of the Al Qaida cell that abducted and threatened to kill Lockheed Martin engineer Paul Johnson. But the institute said the Saudi government decided not to move until Johnson, captured on June 12, was executed.

"The Saudi government knew the location of a number of the terrorists but waited until they killed American hostage Paul Johnson before moving against them," the Saudi Institute said in a statement on Tuesday.

The institute has been regarded as a liberal opposition group that relayed accurate information on Saudi Arabia and its security system, Middle East Newsline reported. The institute was said to have sources in Saudi security agencies and government.
About 15,000 Saudi troops and police searched neighborhoods in Riyad for two days before Johnson was beheaded by Al Qaida insurgents last weekend. On June 18, hours after Al Qaida's announcement that Johnson was executed, Al Muqrin and three of his leading aides were surrounded by Saudi forces and helicopters and killed in a shootout in Riyad.

The institute cited both open-source and exclusive information for its conclusion that Saudi security forces were ordered to wait until Johnson was executed. The opposition group cited the wife of slain Saudi police officer, Mohamed Ali Al Qahtani, as saying her husband knew of what she termed an "important operation" to kill Al Muqrin and his aides two days before the attack. Al Qahtani was killed in the shootout with Al Qaida.

"A Saudi security source has also told the Saudi Institute that the government knew about the whereabouts of many of the terrorists days before they were eventually killed," the institute said. "A statement by Crown Prince Abdullah three days before the shootout similarly suggested that he knew they would be killed, and was just a matter of when."

On June 14, Abdullah told a Saudi delegation, "You will see good news very soon," the official Saudi Press Agency reported.
A U.S. official said he could not confirm the report by the Saudi opposition group. But the official said U.S. intelligence has concluded that most of the Saudi security forces, including the National Guard, has been infiltrated by Al Qaida. He said members of the FBI and State Department team sent to Riyad to help in the search for Johnson expressed concern that Saudi security forces were avoiding suspected Al Qaida hideouts in Riyad.

The institute said it was told by a Saudi security source both before and after the Al Qaida shootout that the government knew the "whereabouts of Al Muqrin and his associates, but chose not to arrest or shoot them."

"They would rather have the terrorists free to justify the widening security clampdown," the security source said.

On May 30, Saudi security forces were ordered to allow an Al Qaida cell to escape the Oasis compound outside Khobar after Islamic insurgents had executed 22 foreigners in the two-day hostage ordeal. Saudi officials later said the government agreed to an Al Qaida demand to allow its members to escape rather than blow up the foreign housing compound.

Western governments with a significant presence in Saudi Arabia have been discussing the deployment of special forces to protect their embassies and consulates. On Wednesday, the London-based Telegraph reported that Britain has sent the SAS special force to Saudi Arabia to guard official British facilities and help in any emergency evacuation of the 20,000 Britons who work in the kingdom.

[Mark100]

justcolleen


That story sounds entirely plausible to me.

[Stephen Jones]

Worldtribune.com hardly appears to be a reliable source on Saudi affairs, even by USA standards. It's Middle East editor is based in Israel and an ex-editor of the Jerusalem Post. It's anti-Saudi stance is clear. The relationship between the headlines and the text in these two stories, which are more or less all it's carrying on the ME, make it clear that it views journalism as having little to do with logic, truth or ethics.

Syria is top investor in Saudia Arabia, followed by Japan

http://216.26.163.62/2004/me_syria_06_23.html
Where we find that Syria is in fact sixth, and the US is number one, but that headline is less anti-Saudi than the other.

or
U.S. threatens to abandon Saudis and their oil

http://216.26.163.62/2004/ss_saudis_06_22.html
where we find the story says nothing of the sort.

The other two top stories on this site are about Iran's links to
Al-Qaeeda and US Aid funding Palestininian terrorism. 'Nuff said.

Now the source behind the particular piece of misinformation is some almost unknown site called "The Saudi Institute" What the story boils down to is given in the time line they provide:

[Stephen Jones]

A little more research on this so-called Saudi Institute. It has a board of two, one a certain Mohammad Ali about whom we are given no details, and another a relative unknown, Dr. Mir Zuhari Hussain, who appears to be around sixty and whose long disintinguished academic career has gone off with such uneventful mediocrity that a search for "mir zohari husain" + Middle East on Google, produces no hits whatsoever.

It gives a list of three scholars and experts. One is Michael Duran of Princetown, an academic heavweight who appears reasonable in his opinions on Saudi, though the fact that he is recommended as a "goodie" by Campus Watch, the Pro-Israeli pressure group designed to harrass academics who take anything but a pro-zionist stance, does make one wonder as to his objectivity. As does the fact that he argued strongly for the invasion of Iraq as a precursor to bringing democracy to the Middle East.

The other two are a Saudi Shiite called Ali Al-Ahmed, who appears to have spent most of his time eking a living out of being against the House of
Saud. The Institute for a Free Lebanon, presumably a pro-Falange pressure group, lists him as one of fifty experts on the Middle
East to invite for radio and TV. together with Ahmed Chalabi and Richard Perle.

Taking the front page is an article of his about the Saudis allegedly blocking (for a few hours) the web site of the third so-called expert, none other than our old friend John Bradley, ex-Arab News, whom I crossed swords with in this forum a couple of years ago about his blatantly exagerating his EFL teaching experience. In the same spirit of paying scant attention to facts the article by Ali Al-Islam claims Bradley "was for years the only permanent, accredited Western journalist inside the Kingdom" even though this is a patent falsehood, as evidenced by the fact that Roger Harrison, who told "The Guardian" today he has no intention of leaving, was employed the same as Bradley and for a least a couple of years before.

[justcolleen]

[veiledsentiments]

Boy I hate it when there is one of those long URLs and those of us that don't have screens the size of football fields have to keep pulling it back and forth line by line. It is even more irritating when the stupid link won't work in the first place!!

Anyway, Stephen, I found your analysis very informative. While the web fills with spurious tales from whoever can figure out how to do it, isn't Google wonderful to get the right perspective.

Thanks, (loved those misleading headlines - have a collection of them myself from over the years in various countries including the US)

VS

[Cleopatra]

Mmmm... misleading headlines, hwere have I seen them before???

Oh - now I remember. MEMRI, the "Middle East Media Research Institute" - which pretends to be an unbiased translation service providing a balanced insight into Arab media, but is in fact basically an arm of Israeli propaganda, is notorious for them. that, and for translating only those articles which suit its blatant pro-Israel, anti-Arab agenda.

And yes, thanks Stephen for your research!

[scot47]

I think we all accept that there are many sympathisers with Al Qaeda in the ranks of the police and the military.

That is what is scary. When you come to a poilice road block what is going to happen ?

[Mark100]

Stephen Jones

Regardless of what you may think and the sources you may quote i think there is enough evidence out there to safely conclude that the security forces have been severely compromised and that westerner safety is not a top priority for this government.
Of course all of these theories many not be 100% accurate but they often contain a mixture of truth and fiction and then it is up to the reader to determine where the truth may be.
Now you may discredit this particular source but you see the government sources are no more accurate nor the Arab news nor other various local based media.
Therefore we must base our own opinions on a collection of sources and of course embassy warnings which incidentally have been reasonably accurate of late.
I think to entirely dismiss the premise behind this article is a mistake nonwithstanding the fact that there are inconsistencies.
If we dismiss this article out of hand then we also have to dismiss just about every article published everywhere on Saudi and terrrorism as there are inconsistencies in the majority of them.
As with most things in life i read as much as possible from as many sources as possible and in the case of Saudi also use anectodal evidence to form my opinions.
In this particular instance i would not rule out the fact that the security forces had prior knowledge of the whereabouts of the kidnapped American.

[Stephen Jones]

If you beleive anything you want because it suits you, good luck.

There is not one shred of evidence suggested anywhere that the security forces had evidence as to Johnson's exact whereabouts. They still haven't found the body as far as I can remember. It's quite possible that they had a rough idea, and discounted the possiblity of doing thousands of house-to-house searches because of doubts over its practicality, and worries about its effect on morale.

These kind of idiot conspiracy theories crop up everywhere when there are high profile crimes. Do you subscribe to the one that Bush and the CIA knew of 9/11 and that instead of stopping it took a bear position in the stock market to profit from it?

[johnslat]

Pretty good article, I'd say:

"June 28, 2004
Saudis in Terror's Shadow

Ever since President Bush set his sights on war, many Americans have looked around the world and wondered if Iraq was really the worst problem out there. North Korea, and probably Iran, are the countries busily creating nuclear weapons in defiance of international law. Sudanese leaders worked closely with Osama bin Laden and slaughter their people as callously as Saddam Hussein did. Pakistan has provided nuclear weapons technology and fuel to rogue nations.

And then there is Saudi Arabia, which produced the young men who flew planes into the World Trade Center and whose wealthy citizens were probably the main funders of the attacks. The independent commission on 9/11 recently concluded that Al Qaeda got no financial support from Saudi Arabia's government or senior officials in the period leading up to 9/11. Any direct cooperation between Saudi intelligence agencies and Osama bin Laden probably ended well over a decade ago, with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Since then, the Saudi government has had no reason to want to help Al Qaeda directly. In the early 1990's, Mr. bin Laden denounced Saudi rulers for allowing American troops to be stationed in the kingdom. In 1994, Riyadh revoked his Saudi citizenship.

However, unofficial tolerance continued. Lax government monitoring of charitable foundations and the money they sent overseas allowed large sums to flow into terrorist training and operations. Without this money, Al Qaeda would have had trouble financing some of its most ambitious attacks. Saudi rulers winked at the terrorist operations as long as they were directed outside their borders. They provided crucial support for the Taliban, while it provided sanctuary and training bases to Osama bin Laden. They began cracking down on terrorist cells within the kingdom only when Al Qaeda expanded its targets to include sites and people within Saudi Arabia itself.

Still, it's good news that the Saudis are getting serious, even if it is simply a matter of self-preservation. Lately Crown Prince Abdullah, the country's de facto ruler, has moved to hunt down terrorists and cut off their finances, and remove inflammatory clerics from their pulpits. The vicious kidnappings and assaults on foreign workers in recent weeks, including the beheading of an American, were certainly a shock to Saudis who need non-Arabs to help run the vast oil industry.

But the terrorists may have had help from low-level officials in the police or other government agencies, where attitudes toward Al Qaeda are more favorable. The Saudi people have been exposed to years of preaching in favor of violent global jihad by senior Wahhabi clerics, whose backing is a main source of legitimacy for the Saudi royal family. That helps explain why a poll taken late last year showed half of all Saudis supporting Osama bin Laden's rhetoric.

Encouragingly, the overwhelming majority of Saudis rejected Mr. bin Laden's political leadership and terrorist tactics. But some do not, and American citizens living in Saudi Arabia are going to need extensive assurance that the government is rooting out Qaeda sympathizers, particularly from the police and security forces.

The United States, which depends on Saudi Arabia not only for support in the fight against terror but also for its role in moderating world oil prices, will certainly continue to work with the kingdom and its leaders. It actually has little choice. But if Washington is interested in long-term stability in Saudi Arabia, it must press harder for reform. Mr. bin Laden's rhetoric strikes a resonant chord among Saudis who are increasingly anxious about the economy and their own uncertain employment prospects. The kingdom uneasily combines a 21st-century oil industry, an absolutist and hugely corrupt family monarchy, and a fiery, fundamentalist religious establishment.

In the narrow spectrum of Saudi royal politics, Crown Prince Abdullah is a reformer. If he presses ahead with the bold changes Saudi Arabia needs he can expect fierce resistance from other princes and influential clerics. But without thoroughgoing reforms, the House of Saud faces a bleak and violent future. "

Regards,
John

[Mark100]

Stephen Jones

You seemed to have missed the point i was trying to make.

I never fully supported this particular conspiracy theory rather i suggested that given the situation here and difficulty in disseminating the truth from fiction that this particular take may have some credence.

Johnslat

Whilst i would agree that the govt are not supporters of Bin Laden (although even here there may be elements within who are), a large section of the population support him and who could blame them as the current rulers have not done much for the average Saudi over the years.