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Saud al-Qahtani, aide to Mohammed bin Salman, hailed as patriot on pro-government social media
Three years after the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi royal court adviser accused of directing the murder is being quietly reintroduced by pro-government influencers as a patriotic figure who has served his country well.
Social media accounts that back the Saudi leadership have in recent months been posting tributes to Saud al-Qahtani, a chief aide to crown prince and Saudi Arabia’s effective leader, Mohammed bin Salman, in a move that is seen as marking his gradual return to the seat of Saudi power. Qahtani vanished from public view in the aftermath of the gruesome killing in Istanbul that shocked the world and almost derailed his boss’s path to the throne.
Riyadh will hope acquisition can not only improve kingdom’s image but also serve as a highly conspicuous display of wealth
From heavyweight boxing to horse racing, from wrestling events to a grand prix; Saudi Arabia’s association with sport has become an integral, and contentious, part of its efforts to rebrand.
But its latest play – taking a majority stake in Newcastle United Football Club – is the kingdom’s boldest move yet, placing it firmly on the world’s sporting stage, and squarely in the crosshairs of its critics.
Alleged sedition and a royal family feud may have been driven by a broader plan to reshape the Middle East
The phone call that shook the Jordanian government came in the second week of March this year. On the line to the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) in Amman was the US Embassy, seeking an urgent meeting about a matter of national importance. The kingdom’s spies were startled. Danger was brewing on the home front, they were told, and could soon pose a threat to the throne.
Within hours, the GID had turned its full array of resources towards one of the country’s most senior royals, Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, a former crown prince and half-brother of the king, whom the Americans suspected was sowing dissent and had begun rallying supporters. By early April, officials had placed Hamzah under house arrest and publicly accused the former heir and two close aides of plotting to unseat King Abdullah.
Lack of US sanctions on crown prince led to harsher sentences for critics of regime, Grant Liberty reports
The Biden administration’s failure to impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has led to a increase in severe sentences for political prisoners in the kingdom, the Guardian can reveal.
The UK-based human rights organisation Grant Liberty found that twice as many harsh sentences had been meted out to Saudi prisoners of conscience in April than in the first three months of this year combined. It followed the Biden administration’s decision on 26 February to publish an intelligence report that showed the crown prince, “approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi”.
Mohammed bin Salman warned of damage to Saudi-UK relations if Premier League refusal not ‘corrected’
The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, warned Boris Johnson in a text message that UK-Saudi Arabian relations would be damaged if the British government failed to intervene to “correct” the Premier League’s “wrong” decision not to allow a £300m takeover of Newcastle United last year.
Johnson asked Edward Lister, his special envoy for the Gulf, to take up the issue, and Lord Lister reportedly told the prime minister: “I’m on the case. I will investigate.”
Awwad al-Awwad, former aide of crown prince, denies threatening to ‘take care of’ Agnès Callamard
The Saudi official who is alleged to have twice issued threats against the independent UN investigator Agnès Callamard is the head of the kingdom’s human rights commission, and formerly served as an aide to the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
Awwad al-Awwad is alleged by a person familiar with the matter to have twice threatened to “take care of” Callamard at a January 2020 meeting with senior human rights officials in Geneva.
Senior official twice threatened to have Agnès Callamard ‘taken care of’ in meeting with UN colleagues in Geneva in January 2020
A senior Saudi official issued what was perceived to be a death threat against the independent United Nations investigator, Agnès Callamard, after her investigation into the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
In an interview with the Guardian, the outgoing special rapporteur for extrajudicial killings said that a UN colleague alerted her in January 2020 that a senior Saudi official had twice threatened in a meeting with other senior UN officials in Geneva that month to have Callamard “taken care of” if she was not reined in by the UN.
President claims sanction for Mohammed bin Salman would have been diplomatically unprecedented but overstates US-Saudi ties
Joe Biden has defended his decision to waive any punishment for Saudi Arabia’s crown prince in the murder of a US-based journalist, claiming that acting against the Saudi royal would have been diplomatically unprecedented for the United States.
In an ABC News interview that aired on Wednesday, the US president discussed his administration’s decision to exempt Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from any penalties for the October 2018, killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Last month, the Biden administration released a declassified US intelligence report which concluded that the crown prince authorized the team of Saudi security and intelligence officials that killed Khashoggi.
US president has chosen to ‘recalibrate’ relations with Saudi Arabia, but some say a rupture is required
In late 2019, as Joe Biden stood on a debate stage and boldly vowed to make Saudi Arabia a pariah if he was elected president, a little-known former aide and Middle East expert was examining what exactly a “progressive” post-Trump stance towards the oil-rich kingdom might look like.
Daniel Benaim, a policy wonk who had worked for Biden as a speechwriter, and for Hillary Clinton and John Kerry before that, first travelled to Saudi Arabia and then began interviewing dozens of Democratic and progressive policy experts to come up with a blueprint.
Dissidents decry lack of sanctions for Mohammed bin Salman over Khashoggi killing and warn of ‘permanent impunity’ for Saudi heir
Exiled dissidents who have been warned about threats against them by Saudi Arabia said they have been put in greater danger by the Biden administration’s decision to forgo direct sanctions on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – even as US intelligence agencies acknowledged that he was complicit in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
The activists, including some who have previously been warned that they were possibly at risk of being hurt by agents of the kingdom, said in interviews with the Guardian that they believed the 35-year-old crown prince would be emboldened after the White House declined to sanction him.
Exclusive: letters to Dominic Raab and Lady Scotland say Princess Basmah requires urgent medical treatment
Supporters of a prominent Saudi Arabian princess detained with her daughter in Riyadh have appealed to the British government to help secure their release.
In two letters to both foreign secretary Dominic Raab and Commonwealth general secretary Patricia Scotland, the princess’s supporters urged them to intervene on behalf of Princess Basmah bint Saud bin Abdulaziz al-Saud and her daughter Souhoud Al Sharif, arrested in Jeddah two years ago.
Biden’s announcement comes after Saudi exiles express shock over lack of sanctions against Mohammed bin Salman over killing of journalist
President Joe Biden said on Saturday that the US would make an announcement on Saudi Arabia on Monday, following an intelligence report that found that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had approved the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018.
Saudi dissidents have expressed anger and disbelief that while the US has officially confirmed the long-suspected view that Prince Mohammed “approved” the killing of the journalist, he will escape punishment. A declassified intelligence assessment released on Friday concluded that the heir to the throne “approved an operation to capture or kill Khashoggi”.
Analysis: The US has sanctioned 76 people linked to Khashoggi’s murder, but not Mohammed bin Salman, future king of a strategic Middle East ally
Friday was the day that Joe Biden’s vaunted drive to put human rights back at the centre of US foreign policy slammed, as such drives usually do, into the brick wall of great power realpolitik.
As it had promised, the new administration obeyed the law laid down by Congress and ignored by its predecessor. It published an unclassified summary of the intelligence assessment that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, “approved” the murder and dismemberment of the Saudi reformer and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Analysis: decision not to penalise Saudi heir over Jamal Khashoggi shows kingdom still has influence
After two years of blanket cover from Donald Trump, a new US president has officially blamed Mohammed bin Salman for the most savage political slaying of modern times and brought the Saudi heir’s unchecked run with Washington to a humiliating halt.
Joe Biden’s confirmation that Prince Mohammed approved the butchering of Jamal Khashoggi bluntly ends the era of bromance between his predecessor and the kingdom’s de facto leader, and signals a very different relationship with a new administration.
As Biden tours a food bank in Houston, Republicans are taking turns railing against his administration at the annual CPAC conference. David Smith sends another virtual report from the gathering.
Speakers at CPAC continue to pledge fealty to former president Donald Trump. Matt Gaetz, a congressman from Florida, told the audience: “My fellow patriots, don’t be shy and don’t be sorry, join me as we proudly represent the pro-Trump America first wing of the conservative movement.
“We’re not really a wing; we’re the whole body. We’re the main attraction in the greatest show on earth.”
Gaetz, a self-proclaimed “Florida man” wearing blue jacket and purple tie, lashed out at “cancel culture” and “lockdown governors” including Democrat Andrew Cuomo of New York. He also defended Republican senator of Ted Cruz of Texas.
“It was awful the way the media treated Ted Cruz,” he said. “I mean, the left and the media were more worried about Ted Cruz going to Mexico to spend his own money than about the caravans coming through Mexico to take ours.”
If Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who voted for Trump’s impeachment after the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol, were on the CPAC stage she would be booed, he predicted. The party’s true leadership was not in Washington, Gaetz said.
He also described the biggest threats to freedom as big government and big business, in particular big tech. “There are no checks and balances when they can control-alt-delete anyone for any reason,” the congressman warned.
NEWS: Several Republicans in the House have skipped Friday's votes and enlisted their colleagues to vote on their behalf, signing letters saying they couldn't attend "due to the ongoing public health emergency."
But those members are scheduled to be at CPAC
US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has announced sanctions on former Saudi intelligence deputy chief Ahmad Hassan Mohammed al Asiri and the Rapid Intervention Force (RIF), known as the ‘Tiger Squad’ which supplied much of the hit team that killed Jamal Khashoggi, the US-based dissident who was murdered by Saudi operatives in Turkey in 2018.
US Treasury announces sanctions on former Saudi intel deputy chief Ahmad Hassan Mohammed al Asiri and the Rapid Intervention Force (RIF), known as the 'Tiger Squad' which supplied much of the hit team that killed Khashoggi https://t.co/pjXruJhUxv
It hasn't been out long but so far seems like view is a mix of relief and frustration: the US calls MBS a murderer, but stops far short of taking actions against him that would in effect change the line of succession.
But that is the snap judgement. Will this report stop business leaders like Steve Schwarzman from meeting with MBS in Riyadh? Will it stop MBS from stepping foot in the US? TBD
Biden administration to target ‘counter-dissident’ activity and Saudi official but not Mohammed bin Salman personally
US intelligence agencies concluded that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, approved the 2018 murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi but stopped short of personally targeting the future Saudi king with financial or other sanctions.
The close associate of the journalist killed by the Saudi regime is determined to speak out in a new documentary, despite the arrest of family members
Not long before he was murdered, the journalist Jamal Khashoggi told his young friend Omar Abdulaziz two things that have subsequently never been far from his thoughts. The first was: “Never forget, your words matter.” And the second: “Be careful, this kind of work might get you killed.”
Omar Abdulaziz, 29, lives in exile in Montreal, Canada, where he has been, before and after Khashoggi’s death, among the most vocal critics of the Saudi regime that killed his friend. His words do matter – his tweets have been viewed nearly a billion times in the past year; he has an almost daily YouTube programme that has clocked up 45m views. And he is left in no doubt of their potential consequence: death threats are routine; both of his younger brothers and dozens of his friends have been arrested and imprisoned in Saudi Arabia in failed attempts to silence him.
The new US administration has signalled it expects the desert kingdom to ‘change its approach’ in a break with Trump policy
The Biden administration has said it expects Saudi Arabia to “change its approach” to the US and signalled that it wants to minimise any direct contact between the president and the country’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Sisters of women’s rights activist step up pressure on Saudi leaders a day after her release from prison
The sisters of the women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul have stepped up pressure on Saudi Arabia’s leaders after her release from prison, demanding “real justice” and insisting the human rights campaigner will fight a year travel ban.
One day after Hathloul’s release from custody – widely billed as a peace offering from Riyadh to the administration of the new US president, Joe Biden – Lina al-Hathloul said her sister would take legal action in the kingdom to overturn restrictions imposed on her as part of her probation.
Racked by war, cholera and now coronavirus, the country faces the world’s worst famine in decades
Ten years after the rage and hope of the Arab spring filled the public spaces of Sana’a, Yemen’s capital has become a curiously quiet place.
Traders and customers alike shuffle through the streets of the old city, ground down by the repression of the Houthi rebel occupation and the economic hardship caused by the Saudi- and Emirati-led coalition blockade.