LONDON - Britain's head of overseas intelligence warned that Saudi Arabia likely would stop sharing vital information on terrorism if prosecutors pursued an investigation into alleged corruption in an arms deal, lawmakers disclosed Tuesday.Ministers were told the inquiry into the BAE Systems PLC arms deal with Saudi Arabia could lead to a withdrawal of Saudi assistance on counterterrorism, according to the annual report of the Intelligence and Security committee. The committee scrutinizes the work of Britain's intelligence and security agencies….
"All relevant agencies were clear about the crucial importance of U.K.-Saudi co-operation in the fight against terrorism and the damage to U.K. interests -- and, potentially, U.K. lives -- if that co-operation were withdrawn," Goldsmith said….
The head of MI6, John Scarlett, told the committee that antagonizing Saudi Arabia risked losing vital intelligence.
"There were threats made to the existence of the co-operation (and) there was reason to take those threats seriously," he said. "Saudi Arabia is an absolutely key country ... they have turned themselves into a very important and powerful player in the world counterterrorism campaign."… -- from this news article
What "assistance on counterterrorism"? Every mosque, every madrasah, every Wahhabi preacher who replaces an Ahmadi one in the mosques of West Africa, or even in Europe (the Ahmadis, being milder, are good at converting people to Islam, but they are not good at keeping the Wahhabis from then taking over those mosques, and those converts, and turning them into the full-fledged, dangerous thing) that has been supported by the nearly $100 billion the Saudis have been allowed to spend in the Lands of the Infidels on spreading Islam also, of course, increases the number, and power, of Muslims.
And inevitably, many of those Muslims will wish to participate, directly or indirectly, in Jihad. The instrument of that Jihad need not necessarily be qitaal, or combat. Jihad can be pursued by other means than combat, or for that matter "terrorism" (what we have no trouble calling "terrorism" -- deliberate attacks on civilians to spread terror -- Muslims consider to be just another form of qitaal). Saudi Arabia does not offer assistance "in counterterrorism." It makes more likely, more possible, terror against Infidels, everywhere it spreads its unmerited money.
Perhaps MI6 operative has members so naive, or so malignant (like that Alistair Crooke fellow, the supporter and promoter of Hamas, who by now is quite possibly doing well as a "consultant" on the Middle East, and I'll leave it to you to guess who is paying his salary, and thereby earning his affection which, come to think of it, was already being offered to Hamas and similar groups even before his career as a "consultant" began) that they think the Saudis are "de-programming" terrorists successfully, and can help the Western world do the same.
Don't be ridiculous. All the Saudis do in their "de-programming" is bring in Al-Saud-financed clerics who tell the prisoners that the Al-Saud are loyal Muslims, that they are helping to spread Islam, that they are true to Islam, and any temporary assistance they get from the Americans or other Infidels is merely a case of using those Infidels for Muslim purposes, not of actually offering them real alliances or friendship.
And what the clerics say is, of course, true: the rulers of Saudi Arabia may be corrupt and many of them decadent beyond belief, but they are attempting (possibly even in a spirit of making up for that decadence) to spread Islam, to make Islam dominant. That kind of deprogramming has nothing that can be of assistance to real Infidels, who cannot possibly point to any Islamic texts that might lessen the hostility felt by captured Muslim terrorists for Infidels, always and everywhere.
Or perhaps the whole thing is merely blague, and MI6 is being blamed for what was a commercial decision. We want to make sales of planes and arms to Saudi Arabia, says BAE, and that's more important than that silly principle -- my god, get with the program -- that no one (including Saudi officials) should be above the law. In Great Britain, all kinds of members of the Al-Saud are seen to be above the law, this year, last year, five years ago, and five years hence: Above the Law.
Here is a previous post about "our staunch ally" Saudi Arabia, which mentions another famous above-the-law case, that of the Saudi prince who used his private plane, and his diplomatic immunity, to smuggle into France 66 suitcases with cocaine (or was it heroin?). Apparently hs share, as an Al-Saud princeling, of the vast sums that the Al-Saud help themselves to, year after year, from the nation's oil revenues, was not enough:
"the close ally..."
-- from a description of Saudi Arabia, in the article above
Saudi Arabia is not and never has been, and never could be, a "close ally" or an "ally" or a "friend" or anything at all except a mortal enemy, of the United States, as the most powerful of Infidel countries. Occasionally the Saudis find that their interests, and those of the Americans, may overlap -- the Saudis wanted the Red Army defeated in Afghanistan, because it was an army of Infidels suppressing Muslims, and the Americans wanted the Red Army defeated in Afghanistan because it wanted the Soviet Union defeated everywhere it chose to project its military power. The Americans wanted to push Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait because they feared the aggressive nature of his regime and his pretense of becoming King of the Arabs; the Saudis wanted to push Saddam Hussei out of Kuwait because they feared his designs on Saudi Arabia and the appeal of any rhetoricla attacks by his regime on the corrupt Al-Saud.
Saudi Arabia has spent nearly $100 billion over the past three decades on the Jihad to spread Islam. That money has paid for mosques, both buildings and maintenance, and madrasas, and propaganda disseminated in those mosques and madrasas that preach hatred and violence toward all Infidels; that money has paid for a vast army of Western hirelings, deployed in the capitals of the West to present Saudi Arabia as, precisely, a "close ally," with the real Saudi Arabia, the one described by J. B. Kelly in his essay "Of Valuable Oil and Worthless Policies," hidden from view -- as for decades it was hidden from American view by incessant Aramco propaganda. That money has alo been used to buy influence to prevent any sensible energy plan that might diminish reliance on oil from being adopted by the government.
Saudi Arabia (and Kuwait and the Emirates as well) needs to be read the riot act. Its rulers should be told they can no longer send money to this country to spread hatred through the kind of propaganda disseminated in the mosques it pays for -- or at least, not without severe consequences. They can no longer longer be allowed to send money to pay for campaigns of Da'wa, targetted at the most vulnerable citizens in this country (if Muslims want to conduct missionary work, local Muslims will have to do it, not as part of a geopolitical campaign by Saudi or other rich Arabs). Any monies that come from Saudi Arabia should be carefully monitored, and those who receive those monies publicized -- so that all those influence-peddlers, those writers of Op/Ed articles and delivers of lectures about "our friends the Saudis" and "America's real interests in the Middle East" -- given by those who cash their Saudi-generated checks even as they mutter darkly about "the Israeli lobby" -- and of course those who pay, directly or indirectly, for such groups as the Council on the "National Interest" -- which "National Interest" seems to be defined in one way only: in taking the and any such monies will be monitored, and the sums given public attention, or if a way can be found to do it, seized. There is no sense in regarding Saudi Arabia as anything other than an enemy, the chief provider of the Money Weapon for the world-wide Jihad. pay for these mosques, madrasas, or to such group, There is nothing that the Saudis can do to us. But the Al-Saud depend on us, in the end, for their own family's security. They depend on the West for petroleum engineers, and doctors, and every sort of expert to run their country. They depend on the West for medical care, education or at least the receipt of plausible-sounding degrees (a different thing), for the children of the ruling family's princes and princelings and even, here and there, possibly a princelette or two, and also for the children of the courtiers and middlemen and fixers who have made money from their connections to the Al-Saud, all essentially creatures of the oil bonanza, that is to say, of unstoppable torrents of money, where once there were only seasonal rivulets from wadis, that are the result only of an accident of geology.
Saudi Arabia depends entirely on the Western world for that medical care, that access to education, that fun-fair-cum-brothel-cum-gambling-den that Monte Carlo, and Las Vegas, and Marbella, and London, and even McLean, Virginia, and Aspen, Colorado (see that conduit for BAE bribes, Prince Bandar). The Al-Saud think they are above the law, and the British government, in choosing not to follow through on the BAE investigation’s results, has shown that at least they are above British law. Now we shall see if the scandal of the 66 suitcases, stuffed with heroin (or was it cocaine?) and brought into France, on a plane owned by a Saudi prince who now claims diplomatic immunity, will be dropped, which means that the Al-Saud would also be above French law.
And the final question remains: will the Al-Saud continue to get away with murder, that is to say with funding those who are hostile to, and who wish to undermine in every way, our own legal and politicial institutions because these institutions flatly contradict both the letter and spirit of Islam?
When will Saudi Arabia be re-dimensioned? When it will be seen as the primitive kingdom, ruled by Johnny-jump-ups who happen to have driven out the Hashemites, and to have defeated the Shammar tribe, and rule because they stand by the mutawwa, stand by the worst Wahhabis who, in turn, provide them, despite their enormous corruption and theft of national wealth, with the legitimacy that so far has allowed them not only to stay in power, but also not merely to dare to bully, but also to hire Western hirelings who help mislead the American public as to the supposed power of Saudi Arabia.
Cut it down to size, but begin by calling in Adel Jubeir and telling him not only that the “ally” business is long over, but the Saudi Arabian rulers, and Saudi “stability,” are dispensable as far as the American government and people are concerned. After all, in the end, if the oil wells of al-Hasa were to fall to those who are even worse, even more open, about their Islam-inculcated hatred of Infidels, we can – and would – seize those oilwells. And if the Saudis reply, as they will, with some blague about how they have “mined” the oilfields, don’t believe it. And if they further allude to all the money they can pull out of the American market, then they can be told that a great deal of Saudi wealth, especially of individuals, can be located and seized; that the corrupt behavior of Saudi princes can be easily tracked, filmed, and put on the Internet which would not make the lives of those princes any easier at home, and that there is a great deal more that can be done –unless they stop funding campaigns of Da’wa, not only here but elsewhere.
[Posted by: Hugh at June 23, 2007 8:20 PM]
An articdle about another Above-The-Law Saudis. There are so many:
Royal Coke
How the U.S. and France let the smuggling prince get away to help the war on terror
By Doug Ireland
Thursday, May 6, 2004 - 12:00 am
A book to be released this week in Paris lifts the veil on a sordid tale that even John Grisham would have had trouble inventing, about a Saudi prince-diplomat who smuggles two tons of cocaine into Europe on a jetliner owned by the Saudi royal family — and gets away with it. Coming right when Bob Woodward’s report of the Bush-Bandar deal to lower gas prices for electoral purposes has once again put the spotlight on the Saudis, this history of a different sort of carburant doesn’t just reveal another seamy underside of the despotic kingdom — it raises embarrassing new post-9/11 questions for the Bush administration, and exposes the hypocrisy of Jacques Chirac’s government in facilitating the prince’s getaway.
Prince Nayef bin Fawwaz al-Shaalan is a wealthy, U.S.-educated, high-ranking Saudi diplomat who speaks eight languages, has played a key role in OPEC negotiations, and owns significant oil interests in Colombia and Venezuela, countries he often visited on official diplomatic missions. (He has privileged personal relations with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.)
Prince Nayef and his twin brother, Prince Saud, are both sons-in-law of the Saudi Vice Minister of Defense — who, as a brother of King Fahd, is in the direct line of royal succession. Prince Nayef’s older brother, Prince Nawaf, is married to a daughter of Crown Prince Abdullah, who is the veritable head of the Saudi government.
On May 16, 1999, a Boeing 727 frequently used for official Saudi government missions (and belonging to Skyways International, a company owned by the Saudi royal family) landed at Le Bourget airport near Paris after a flight from Venezuela. Onboard were 14 passengers, a majority of them Saudi princes and princesses, including Prince Nayef and Prince Saud. In the baggage compartment: an impressive number of fiberglass suitcases containing a total of two tons of pure cocaine, which had been loaded on the plane without problem in Caracas under the cover of diplomatic immunity.
When the plane landed in France, it was immediately met by a raft of official Saudi vehicles and two rented vans, and a troop of courtiers including Saudi Embassy employees. Under the personal supervision of Prince Nayef and his bodyguards, the coke-filled suitcases were loaded into the two rented vans. Diplomatic immunity once again ensured no customs inspection of the luggage. And the cortege of vehicles, led by Prince Nayef in a black Mercedes, left Le Bourget without problem. En route to Paris, the two vans with the coke quietly peeled off from the convoy and headed for a rented house in the Paris suburb of Noissy-le-Sec, where the pricey cargo was to be stocked for a few days until it was redistributed for sale in France and other European countries.
The coke smuggling and the deliberately bungled investigation that let Prince Nayef escape prosecution are dissected in Le Coke Saudienne: au coeur d’une affaire d’Etat (Editions Flammarion), by Fabrice Monti, a former official of the French Ministry of the Interior who was attached to the national drug police, headquartered in the celebrated Quai des Orfevres in Paris. The book — which includes 63 pages of photocopied government documents confirming its principal allegations — demonstrates how the well-traveled prince went shopping for a coke deal through a sexpot Miami real estate agent named Doris, who had deep family and business connections to the Medellín cartel.
Through Doris, Prince Nayef was introduced to Oscar Eduardo Campuzano Zapata, known as “El Flaco” (The Thin Man), a top lieutenant of the late Medellín drug baron Pablo Escobar. The prince-diplomat met with Zapata and his cohorts in a series of locations, from the luxurious Spanish resort of Marbella to the Saudi kingdom itself. The deal was finalized when Prince Nayef took the Medellín gangsters on a trip into the Saudi desert, far from prying eyes and microphones.
“El Principe,” as he was known to his Medellín partners, had a grand, long-simmering plan: He initially proposed an extensive series of coke shipments of five to 10 tons each. The previous year, Prince Nayef had founded the Kranz Bank in Switzerland — which he owned — to launder the drug money (two of the bank’s directors helped unload the coke shipment from the prince’s plane in Paris). But Zapata and his gangsters were wary of the royal first-time coke smuggler, and so the first shipment of two tons was agreed on as a trial run, to test the prince’s good faith and the security of his plan. Unfortunately for the prince, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency had intercepted a fax to the Medellín gangsters containing enough imprecise hints about the Paris shipment so that — when it was passed to the French drug police — it allowed the Quai des Orfevres to localize the safe house where the coke was stored, and raid it. But not before half the nose candy had already been redistributed. So the prince, instead of realizing the $30 million profit he’d been promised, would end up getting only a third of it for his efficient smuggling.
The book recounts the four-year investigation that allowed Prince Nayef to be identified as the organizer of the coke deal. The DEA nabbed, and turned into informers through plea bargains on other drug charges, Zapata and many of the other Medellín principals (their eventual prison terms were astonishingly light). The DEA fed its findings to the French, who were discretely building their case from the bottom up, hoping to lure the prince onto European soil where he could be arrested.
But after 9/11, the cooperation between the U.S. and French police soured — and the French drug police were appalled when the DEA and a Miami federal prosecutor publicly announced in 2002 an indictment of Prince Nayef, who was thus warned that he was under suspicion. (The principal dossier against the prince later mysteriously vanished from the DEA’s files.) The book details a “police war” between the American DEA and the Quai des Orfevres.
The DEA’s strangely precipitous move in indicting the prince before they had him in hand inflamed the Saudi government — which immediately put enormous pressure on the French to reveal to it the evidence against the prince and stifle his prosecution. The Saudis had a powerful weapon. They threatened to pull the plug on a contract (referred to by its acronym, SBGDP-MIKSA) worth a colossal 7 billion euros that had been under negotiation between the Saudis and France for a decade, whereby the French multinational Thales (formerly Thomson) would construct an elaborate radar-based security system to protect the kingdom’s frontiers. And the French attempt to collar Prince Nayef suddenly lost steam.
The stench of cynicism wreathes the actions of both conservative Western governments. For the Bush administration, Saudi cooperation in the war on terrorism (a major electoral issue) was more important than bagging the smuggling prince — which could well have jeopardized U.S.–Saudi relations, given Nayef’s high-level position in the royal family. Moreover, the book suggests that the real motivation of the already wealthy prince — a non-drinker and non-smoker who is said to be a strict observer of the Koran — in turning smuggler was to assure a secret source of funding for Wahabiite fundamentalism (just as the sanctimonious Taliban trafficked heroin to support their jihads). Any revelation of this new chapter in Saudi financing of Islamist radicalism would have further sundered the image of Bush’s friends the Saudis with the American electorate. For Chirac’s Elysee Palace, the huge contract with the Saudis was worth thousands of jobs to a France suffering severe rising unemployment (a major electoral issue).
Prince Nayef, says the book, actually was able to accompany King Fahd on a trip to Europe in July 2002 without being bothered by either the French or the Americans. He is today safe from prosecution in Saudi Arabia, free to enjoy his wealth.
And less than two weeks ago, the man who, as French Minister of the Interior, orchestrated the French stifling of the hunt for Prince Nayef — Nicolas Sarkozy, now Minister of Finance — was received practically as a head of government in Washington by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, who both accorded him long private meetings. More proof that, among hypocrites, all may be forgiven.
There is no substitute for backing down to a direct threat from a 'staunch ally' like Saudi Arabia.
Next thing you know, the Saudis will threaten to scrap their vaunted 6-week rehabilitive Islamic re-programming initiative.
That could be catastrophic to the "war on terror".
"the Saudis will threaten to scrap their vaunted 6-week rehabilitive Islamic re-programming initiative"
....OH NO!!!! say it isn't so....
Reads like convoluted extortion to me. All the Saudis do is play lip-service on the anti-terrorism anyways. Someone please have the guts to tell them we won’t pay the “protection money” any longer. This is worse than the Mafia.
I want to see this report...
Washington - The State Department notified Saudi Arabia today that the United States would no longer supply weapons, intelligence information, or security for the oil producing country. The Secretary of State said dwindling Saudi reserves, newly constructed nuclear energy plants in the United States, and renewal of domestic petroleum extraction made support for the Arab country unnecessary and counter productive.
Among the many other reasons given for the change in policy was the success of the Department of Energy's Fusion Initiative, now expected to completely replace coal, oil, and conventional nuclear fission energy sources for domestic electricity production over the next two decades. The printed statement distributed to reporters cited several other ancillary reasons for the change in policy; among the most important were the Saudi's "incredible tenacity" at resisting social change which would have brought it into the twenty first century, and its "continued export of troubling ideas and values".
At the conclusion of his statement, the Secretary expressed his belief that the policy change was a natural result of the Saudi's "continuing, deliberate failure to take advantage of a decades long, multi trillion dollar opportunity to grow into socially open, materially successful, and intellectually vibrant society". Instead, he described the Saudi's as consistent "sponsors of hate" and a "general pain in the ass".
He ended by reiterating the administration's expectation that over the next few years the monetary influence of the Middle Eastern country would "dwindle back into the sand from which it came nearly a century ago."
... as soon as possible, if not sooner.
Hugh sez:
Every mosque, every madrasah, every Wahhabi preacher who replaces an Ahmadi one in the mosques of West Africa, or even in Europe (the Ahmadis, being milder, are good at converting people to Islam, but they are not good at keeping the Wahhabis from then taking over those mosques, and those converts, and turning them into the full-fledged, dangerous thing) that has been supported by the nearly $100 billion the Saudis have been allowed to spend in the Lands of the Infidels on spreading Islam also, of course, increases the number, and power, of Muslims.
Very interesting!
The Ahmadi's happen to be the sect that is building the largest and the most mosques in Germany right now. Could we get a little more on this subject? Could it be that there is a method in this using Ahmadi's to prepare the ground and convert people so that Wahabi's can then take it over?
sheikyermami
concerning the Ahmadis, you might be onto something.
It looks like thegoodcop/badcop 'moderate' Muslim/ jihadi Muslim confusion technique that we've already seen, applying on another level.
I suspect that Sufism is similarly employed, in the West. Think of Fethullah Gulen.
Never mind about the Muslim Brotherhood - what about all the Sufi orders which date back centuries? They're particularly entrenched in West Africa.
And I wouldn't be surprised if even the Bahaii end up being used as a 'softening up' agent and stalking horse.
They are believers, we are merely infidels.
What do you expect?
I don't think the Ahmadis are conscously acting as stalking-horses. Not at all. The Ahmadis who are about to move into a former synagogue in Queens, for example (see the article in the "Queens Tribune," Jan. 17-23 issue, p. 24: "Temple's Sale To Islamic Group Raises Specter of Underlying Fears" by Liz Skalka), are not Wahhabis. Indeed, they have very cleverly, in their discussions with officials of the synagogue, used the fact that Ahmadis are persecuted in Pakistan (forced to declare themselves, on official documents, as "Ahmadis" rather then as "Muslims") to allay any fears or suspicions.
But the fact is that Ahmadis, by the very fact of their slightly off-center Islam, with that late, post-Muhammad prophet (and they are denounced by orthodox Muslims, often, as "Qadianis"), does make their appeal to non-Muslims somewhat stronger. And they are slightly more relaxed, as in sub-Saharan Africa, about a little syncretism. But what then happens? I know that in West Africa, the local, easygoing, syncretistic, not-quite-real-Islam Ahmadiya mosques, having done their bit to convert the locals, are then replaced, or in some cases simply taken over, by Saudi-financed Wahhabi mosques and preachers. And in the last few years, black Africans who have been away for years, and returned, have been horrified to see the changes in the practice of Islam. And in such places as Niger (you remember Niger -- the place that really does have all that uranium ore?) the wahhabization has been frightening.
Meanwhile, take a look, for an example of typical naivete, at that story by Liz Skalka mentioned abouve. I particularly like this:
"Members of the temple's Board of Trustees have met with people from Ahmadiyya and asked, point blank, wether it believed in Israel's right to exist as a state and the group told the board yes, Reisamn said.
'We certainly don't want to risk having people move into our building who are then going to denounce us,' she said.
Oh, so that's all right then. They said that they "believed" in "Israel's right to exist as a state." With what dimensions? Under what conditions? As a dhimmi state, permanently in thrall to Muslims, or as a self-sufficient state with defensible borders, and one which exists by right, or on Muslim sufferance?
It would have been better for the Trustees of this synagogue to have done a little study, by reading Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, on their own.
The article contiues:
"Ahmadiyya, a moderate Muslim group, has been in the borough since 1984 and has a headquarters in Holliswood. It has 64 chapters in the United States and locations all over the world, including Israel.
Reisman and others pointed out Ahmadiyya is a persecuted Muslim group in Pakistan.
Members of the board, Reisman said, have been to Ahmadiyya's mosque, where a kosher dinner was prepared for them.
'They are an amazing group of people,' she said. 'When we left, we looked at each other and said 'why don't we know them?'"
Those of you familiar with the Collected Writings of Naseem have had quite an introduction to the thoughts, and thought-processes, and Weltanshauung, of one Ahmadi. So you probably will agree with Ms. Reisman when she innocently exclaims "they are an amazing group of people."
But not quite in the way she means.