THE DOCTRINE OF THE N.A.F.T.A. GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS IS TO SERVE THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS WITH ENDLESS WAVES OF INVADING 'CHEAP' LABOR SUBSIDIZED WITH WELFARE FUNDED BY TAXES ON MIDDLE AMERICA.
In many speeches, Mayorkas says he is building a mass migration system to deliver workers to wealthy employers and investors and “equity” to poor foreigners. The nation’s border laws are subordinate to elites’ opinion about “the values of our country,” Mayorkas claims.
Fr. Miguel Soto Gaxiola speaks briefly with Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square. (Facebook)
In a public letter, the Catholic Diocese of Culiacan in Sinaloa, Mexico, has directed that Catholic politicians in its region who voted for the legalization of abortion must not present themselves for Holy Communion at Mass.
On March 8, the Sinaloa legislature voted (28-2 and 9 abstentions) to legalize abortion up through 13 weeks of pregnancy. It was the seventh Mexican state to pass such a law. The other states allowing for abortion are Mexico City, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Hidalgo, Baja California, and Colima. In 25 other Mexican states, abortion is still illegal, reported Mexico News Daily.
In Sinaloa, the Church decided to deny Communion to Catholic politicians who voted for abortion because such an act, a serious sin, reveals the "objectively unworthy state of a person to receive the Body of Christ," said Rev. Miguel Soto Gaxiola, the director of the Culiacan Commission for Life, Family, Youth and Laity.
A woman undergoes an abortion in Mexico City, Mexico. (Getty Images)
In the letter concerning the pro-abortion Catholic politicians, Fr. Gaxiola stressed that "today we have many people scandalized by the public betrayal of the Church's teaching on faith and morals by those legislators who call themselves 'Catholic,'" reported the Catholic News Agency.
"Indeed, the questioning of the faithful makes sense: How can a Catholic who openly promotes and is in favor of policies contrary to Life come to Mass and approach to take communion?" reads the letter.
“In the Magisterium of the Church, the value of life has always and at all times been defended from its conception until its natural death,” the letter states.
The letter, according to the CNA, concludes, "Answering the question: Can a deputy or any person who professes to be a Catholic, while openly cooperating or legislating against life, receive Holy Communion? No. You cannot approach Sacramental Communion. Nor that person can be a godparent or companion of other people who want to receive other sacraments such as baptism.”
The late Pope St. John Paul II. (Getty Images)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, "From its conception, the child has the right to life. Direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, is a 'criminal' practice, gravely contrary to the moral law. The Church imposes the canonical penalty of excommunication for this crime against human life." (2322)
In his encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae(Gospel of Life), Pope St. John Paul II wrote, "Disregard for the right to life, precisely because it leads to the killing of the person whom society exists to serve, is what most directly conflicts with the possibility of achieving the common good," the Pope said. "Consequently, a civil law authorizing abortion or euthanasia ceases by that very fact to be a true, morally binding civil law.”
A baby killed by saline-injection abortion. (Priests for Life)
"Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize," he said. "There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection."
"In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to 'take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it,'" declared the Pope. (Emphasis added.)
On Tuesday, Philadelphia police announced the termination of the officer responsible for killing 12-year-old Thomas Siderio Jr. On March 1, Siderio was shot in the back as he ran away from two plainclothes police officers.
While police initially claimed that Siderio, who is white, was holding a gun when he was shot, police sources told the Philadelphia Inquirer that video from neighbors indicates that Siderio may have tossed a weapon and was therefore unarmed when the fatal shot was fired. The officers were not wearing body cameras, as, according to Philadelphia policy, only uniformed police wear them.
Police records obtained by the Inquirer report that on March 1, four undercover officers were in an unmarked car around 7:20 p.m. in South Philadelphia, allegedly staking out an area after a 17-year-old boy and 20-year-old man were seen on social media brandishing weapons.
Thomas Siderio (family photo)
Siderio and a 17-year-old boy were on bicycles when the plainclothes officers’ unmarked car approached them. The officers say they turned on their flashing lights, heard gunfire, saw their back window shatter, and then two of them gave chase to the two boys, firing four shots at them as they fled.
At a March 8 press conference, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said that the two officers, identified as Kwaku Sarpong and Edsaul Mendoza in police records, chased after Siderio, firing one shot each. According to Outlaw, while Sarpong “maintained cover,” Mendoza continued to pursue the boy, firing two more shots, one of which fatally hit him in the upper right back, exiting through his left chest.
Kim Tomasetti, the mother of the 17-year-old who was with Siderio, disputed much of the official story. Her son told her the officers did not turn on their emergency lights or identify themselves as police before firing shots at the two boys. Tomasetti added that the boys were afraid that someone in the car was about to attack them and had no idea they were police officers.
At the March 8 press conference, Outlaw announced the termination of Mendoza, although she refused to identify him by name, citing unspecified potential threats to his safety, and referring to him only as “officer number 1.” Police sources, however, confirmed to the Inquirer that Mendoza was the officer who will be terminated.
“It was clear that the use-of-force policy was violated,” Outlaw said. Under Philadelphia police policy, officers should not shoot at a fleeing suspect “who presents no immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury.” She said it was “certain” that officer number 1 was the one who fired the shot that killed Siderio.
In 1985, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Tennessee v. Garner that it violates the Constitution to shoot an “unarmed, non-dangerous fleeing suspect,” and that an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury is required before the police can open fire.
Outlaw declined to specify where Siderio’s purported gun was located at the time Mendoza fired the final two shots or how close Siderio was to him. Given the unusual decision to terminate a police officer and Outlaw’s reference to the violation of the use-of-force policy, it is clear Siderio posed absolutely no threat when Mendoza shot him in the back.
Outlaw, however, did continue to claim that Siderio fired a shot into the unmarked car, which Siderio’s family’s lawyer, J. Connor Corcoran, disputes. “It’s unbelievable that [Outlaw] would refuse to provide factual evidence to the press about the details of the shooting that she has in her current possession, and then speculate egregiously as to whether or not my client had a gun in his hands, let alone fired one,” he said.
On Tuesday, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner stated that an investigation of the shooting is ongoing, but he did not indicate whether any criminal charges would be filed against Mendoza or the other three officers. “When it is appropriate for us to do so, we will disclose findings of our currently active investigation and decision on whether or not to pursue any criminal charges,” he said.
Siderio’s death is only one of the latest in a long string of police killings, with over one thousand people losing their lives at the hands of police in the United States on average every year. The middle schooler’s murder is particularly shocking given his youth.
JoAnne Moore, a family friend, started a GoFundMe for Siderio’s funeral expenses last week. “The death of a child is not only devastating but it is a tragedy no matter what the situation,” she wrote. “These grandparents must now say goodbye to their only grandchild, the grandchild they could not save.”
“No matter the circumstances he was just a boy,” wrote a relative in another social media post. “There is a family and community of children mourning and trying to understand the death of another child.”
While the Democratic Party and groups aligned with it, such as Black Lives Matter, treat all police killings as a question of racism against blacks and other minorities, in fact a plurality of those killed each year in the United States are, like Siderio, white. The overwhelming majority of victims of police shootings are from the working class.
There is no way forward against this epidemic of violence against workers through either the Democrats or Republicans, who both continue to increase police budgets year after year, and who agree with President Joe Biden’s recent State of the Union speech in which he proclaimed, “We should all agree the answer is not to defund the police. It’s to fund the police. Fund them. Fund them. Fund them with the resources and training — resources and training they need to protect our communities.”
Police in capitalist class society, far from protecting workers, defend the ruling class against workers. It is only through the unity of the working class, regardless of race, against the capitalist system, that police violence can be ended.
The perilous ramifications of the September 11 attacks on the United States are only now beginning to unfold. They will undoubtedly be felt for generations to come. This is one of many sad conclusions readers will draw from Craig Unger's exceptional book House of Bush House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties.As Unger claims in this incisive study, the seeds for the "Age of Terrorism" and September 11 were planted nearly 30 years ago in what, at the time, appeared to be savvy business transactions that subsequently translated into political currency and the union between the Saudi royal family and the extended political family of George H. W. Bush.
Saudi monarchy executes 81 men in one day: Medieval barbarism from top US ally in Mideast
In a brutal act of mass murder, the US-backed Saudi monarchy executed 81 men Saturday, the largest such massacre in the history of the kingdom. The Saudi government did not say how the executions were carried out, but beheading is the method it usually employs against its victims. Seven of those executed were Yemenis, one was Syrian, and the rest were Saudi citizens.
The barbaric action received only perfunctory attention in the American media, in sharp contrast to the saturation coverage of every alleged atrocity carried out by Russian forces in Ukraine. The White House and State Department did not issue any public statements.
While the Saudi Ministry of Interior claimed that the capital crimes for which the 81 had been executed included terrorism and “multiple heinous crimes that left a large number of civilians and law enforcement officers dead,” it gave no details of the alleged offenses or name any of the supposed victims killed by those executed.
The death toll was largest in a single day of executions since the bloodstained kingdom was founded by Ibn Saud in 1932, when he united the Arabian Peninsula in the wake of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I by British and French imperialism.
The largest previous mass execution came in 1980, when 63 men were put to death after Islamist militants seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca in an effort to overthrow the regime. In 2016, the monarchy executed 47 people, including the Shi’ite Muslim leader Nimr al-Nimr, to suppress political opposition in the eastern provinces, largely populated by the Shi’ite minority.
Similar political considerations were apparently involved in Saturday’s bloodbath, as Shi’ite young men were the majority of those executed. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—the real ruler of Saudi Arabia under the nominal reign of his senile, 85-year-old father King Salman—has focused internal repressive measures on Shi’ite opposition, portraying all dissidents as agents of Iran.
Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud (Credit: en.kremlin.ru)
The regime dropped the death penalty for drug offenses in 2019, resulting in a sharp fall in state killings in 2020. This underscores the fact that Saturday’s mass execution, which produced a greater death toll in a single day than during all of 2020 or 2021, was for political offenses.
The Ministry of Interior issued a lurid statement portraying the victims as linked to foreign terrorist groups, including ISIS and Al Qaeda (both of them past beneficiaries of Saudi government support), who targeted government officials and “vital economic sites,” killed police and planted land mines, all without any evidence. The ministry did not even bother to present “confessions” extracted from the prisoners.
Some prisoners were said to be linked to the Houthis, the Yemeni group that overthrew a Saudi-backed regime and has been fighting a protracted war against Saudi military intervention in that country since 2015.
Human rights groups, including those formed by Saudi dissidents in exile, condemned the executions and said that the majority of the victims were from the brutally oppressed Shi’ite minority in the eastern region.
Reprieve, an advocacy group that tracks Saudi executions, said in a statement, “The world should know by now that when Mohammed bin Salman promises reform, bloodshed is bound to follow,” adding, “We fear for every [prisoner] following this brutal display of impunity.”
The statement noted the upcoming visit of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Riyadh, “to beg for Saudi oil to replace Russian gas,” and pointed to the contrast between US and European denunciation of Russian actions in Ukraine and “rewarding those of the crown prince.”
The Iran-based Shi’ite news aggregator Ahlul Bayt News Agency (ABNA) reported that those killed in the mass executions included “41 from the peace protest movement in Al-Ahsa and Qatif [eastern Saudi Arabia], under the false accusation of committing ‘terrorist’ acts,” and accused the Saudi regime of “committing more crimes against innocent people, exploiting the so-called war on terror and making use of the current international situation, where the world is preoccupied with what is happening in Ukraine, to carry out a horrific massacre against a group of young people who only exercised their legitimate right of expressing their right to freedom.”
The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights said that in the cases it had been able to document, the charges involved “not a drop of blood,” even under the rules laid down by the Saudi monarchy to establish criteria justifying executions. The nature of the charges in many of the cases could not be determined because of judicial secrecy and intimidation of family members of those put to death.
The group said it had documented cases in which prisoners had been tortured, held incommunicado and denied access to lawyers, despite the official claims that all the victims had full access to legal defense.
Ali Adubusi, the head of the group, said in a statement: “These executions are the opposite of justice. Some of these men were tortured, most trials were carried out in secret. This horrific massacre took place days after Mohammed bin Salman declared executions would be limited. It is the third such mass killing in the seven-year reign of King Salman and his son.”
Adubusi was referring to the long interview with the crown prince published in The Atlantic last week, one of the most shameful efforts to glorify the Saudi butcher. Bin Salman is portrayed in the article as an autocratic but liberal reformer who seeks to put an end to mass executions.
Such groveling—once the province of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and other admirers of brute force—has been out of favor in the American corporate press since the crown prince was publicly linked to the killing of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, a regular op-ed contributor of the Washington Post. Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey in 2018, by a hit squad dispatched by bin Salman.
The Saudi regime has been emboldened by the US-led war hysteria over Ukraine, not only to intensify its internal repression, but also to step up its near-genocidal war in Yemen. The assault on Yemen which began in 2015 has driven millions to the brink of starvation, creating what international agencies have characterized as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, with more than 377,000 dead. The US government has been the principal enabler of these attacks, providing targeting information and replenishing Saudi weapons stockpiles.
According to a report Sunday in the Wall Street Journal, Saudi-led forces in Yemen carried out more than 700 airstrikes in February, the most since 2018, killing hundreds of Yemeni civilians. Most of the bombing raids have been focused on the oil-rich Marib area, where a Houthi offensive threatens to take the last significant portion of northern Yemen still under control of the Saudi puppet regime of ousted president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.
FBI declassified document confirms links between Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 terrorists
Under an executive order from President Joe Biden, the FBI declassified an FBI report on Saturday—the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks—showing that there were links between former representatives of the Saudi Arabian government and the hijackers.
Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud (Credit: en.kremlin.ru)
Although the 16-page report, dated April 4, 2016, is redacted, it contains important details about an investigation by the FBI into the support given by a Saudi consular official and a suspected Saudi intelligence agent in Los Angeles to at least two of the men who hijacked commercial airliners on September 11, 2001.
Entitled, “ENCORE Investigation Update, Review and Analysis: Interview [Redacted] (NOV 2015),” the FBI report reviews connections and witness testimony regarding the activity of the suspected intelligence agent Omar al-Bayoumi and says that he was deeply involved in providing “travel assistance, lodging and financing” to help the two hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.
The report says that what had been previously portrayed in the official 9/11 Commission Report of 2004 as a “chance meeting” between al-Bayoumi and the two future hijackers was in fact a preplanned and well-orchestrated rendezvous at a restaurant. Purportedly attending San Diego State University as part of a work-study program paid for by a contractor with the Saudi General Authority of Civil Aviation, al-Bayoumi was characterized by the 9/11 Commission report “to be an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamic extremists.”
The document from Operation Encore, the codename of the FBI investigation, also says that Saudi diplomat and Islamic Affairs official Fahad al-Thumairy had “tasked” an associate to help al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar when they arrived in Los Angeles and told the associate that the men were “two very significant people.”
Al-Hazmi and Al-Mihdhar were two of the five terrorists who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport and flew the Boeing 757 into the Pentagon, killing all 64 aboard and another 125 people in the building.
The FBI release is the first of what is expected to be several documents in response to the September 3 executive order signed by President Biden on “Declassification of Certain Documents Concerning the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.” Biden’s order stated, “Information collected and generated in the United States Government’s investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks should now be disclosed, except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise.”
This is the first official US acknowledgement that a relationship existed between individuals connected to the government of Saudi Arabia and the attacks that occurred twenty years ago, attacks that became the basis for international war crimes against Afghanistan and Iraq, rendition to black sites, torture and indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay as well as an assault on numerous fundamental rights contained in the US Constitution. It is significant that an FBI document based on an interview conducted nearly six years ago is now confirming what has been widely known since 2001.
Family members of those killed on 9/11 responded to the FBI document with blunt statements. Brett Eagleson, whose father died at the World Trade Center, said, “Today marks the moment when the Saudis cannot rely on the U.S. government from hiding the truth about 9/11.” Terry Strada of the group 9/11 Families United said, “Now the Saudis’ secrets are exposed, and it is well past time for the Kingdom to own up to its officials’ roles in murdering thousands on American soil.”
Jim Kreindler, who represents families suing Saudi Arabia, said the report validates their case. “This document, together with the public evidence gathered to date, provides a blueprint for how al-Qaida operated inside the US with the active, knowing support of the Saudi government.”
A statement from the Saudi embassy said: “No evidence has ever emerged to indicate that the Saudi government or its officials had previous knowledge of the terrorist attack or were in any way involved in its planning or execution. Any allegation that Saudi Arabia is complicit in the September 11 attacks is categorically false.”
The administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all blocked public access to any FBI documents regarding Saudi Arabian involvement with al-Qaeda on the grounds that it risked “significant harm to the national security” of the US. However, the existence of Operation Encore, which dates back to 2007, was revealed in an investigative report based largely on anonymous sources published by ProPublica in January 2020. ProPublica said at the time that the Encore investigation “exposed a bitter rift within the bureau over the Saudi connection.”
The revelations contained in the declassified document raise many more questions regarding Saudi Arabia’s role and that of US intelligence agencies in the events of 9/11. As explained by the World Socialist Web Site on Saturday, not only did the Saudis al-Thumairy and al-Bayoumi facilitate the two 9/11 hijackers in California, but both al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar lived in “the home of the main FBI informant in the Muslim community of San Diego.
“The Saudi connection is so sensitive not only because it involves US imperialism’s principal ally in the Arab world, but because the intimate ties between Saudi and US intelligence agencies raise troubling questions about how it was possible that no one in the CIA, FBI or other agencies was aware of the hijackers’ plans, even though several of them had been under CIA surveillance and were on FBI watch lists as they freely entered and moved about the United States.”
BEHIND THE SAUDIS INVASION IS THE BUSH FAMILY'S HALF-CENTURY AND TWO WAR DEALS WITH THE SAUDIS.
FOLLOW SAUDIS MONEY INTO THE BUILDING OF THE PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARIES OF BUSH, CLINTON AND OBAMA AND THE FUNDING OF THE FRAUDULENT CLINTON FOUNDATION FAMILY SLUSH FUND.
Saudis and UAE Won’t Lower Oil Prices Until Biden Helps Them With This Problem
Biden’s America is in free fall and the whole world knows it.
America, in these halcyon days of Old Joe Biden’s foundering regime, is in free fall, and the whole world knows it. As PJM’s inimitable Stephen Green put it recently, “The alleged American president’s response to the Ukraine War has been so detrimental to America’s own interests that everyone sees him as weak. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that two of the Middle East’s richest petrostates wouldn’t even take Biden’s call,” that is, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The reasons for the unprecedented snub are clear: the Saudis and the UAE know that Biden is not a serious character, and they also know that his handlers are not likely to give him the one thing they want most from the United States: help against Iran.
Old Joe was trying to get in touch with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, both of whom are the de facto rulers of their respective countries, to try to get some relief for skyrocketing gas prices. The UK’s Daily Mail reported that “as oil prices push over $130 a barrel for the first time in almost 14 years, the two Gulf countries are the only major oil producers that can pump millions more barrels of more oil to calm the crude market at a time when American gasoline prices are at high levels.”
They’re the only major oil producers who can help, but they won’t, at least not until they get some assistance from Old Joe regarding Yemen. In Yemen, the Iran-backed Shi’ite Houthis are waging jihad against the Sunnis in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Biden’s handlers, anxious to replicate Barack Obama’s disastrous Iran nuclear deal, are making concession after concession to the Iranian mullahs. The Saudis and the UAE have noticed and want Biden to play ball with them before they will consider lowering oil prices.
Saudi Arabia can hardly be classified as a totally reliable ally of the United States, particularly given lingering questions about the extent of its involvement at the highest levels in the 9/11 jihad attacks. However, it is a notable bulwark against Iran in the region, and so many on both sides of the aisle see the utility of the American alliance with the kingdom. That group, however, apparently does not include Biden’s handlers. In September 2021, they quietly removed an advanced missile defense system from Saudi Arabia, heedless of the fact that the Saudis were suffering ongoing air attacks from the Houthis in Yemen.
This was yet another attempt to appease the mullahs in Tehran. The Saudi Defense Ministry shrugged it off, saying its relationship with the U.S. was “strong, longstanding and historic,” and adding: “The redeployment of some defense capabilities of the friendly United States of America from the region is carried out through common understanding and realignment of defense strategies as an attribute of operational deployment and disposition.” However, the former director of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services, Prince Turki al-Faisal, sounded a dissenting note, saying: “I think we need to be reassured about American commitment. That looks like, for example, not withdrawing Patriot missiles from Saudi Arabia at a time when Saudi Arabia is the victim of missile attacks and drone attacks — not just from Yemen, but from Iran.”
In the context of all this, it is important to remember what Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on November 5, 2020: that “the next U.S. administration will surrender to the Iranian nation.” This wasn’t just tough talk. In light of Biden’s handlers’ apparent willingness to give the mullahs all they want and more, it was a sober assessment of the geopolitical situation.
And now it is bearing bitter fruit. Biden and the U.S. are in this bind all because Biden’s handlers wanted to vindicate Obama and discredit Trump. Obama’s ridiculously weak Iran nuclear deal was his cornerstone foreign policy achievement, but then Trump skewered it — correctly — as the worst deal any American administration has ever concluded, and got us out of it. Now Biden’s handlers are so desperate to shore up Obama’s sagging legacy that they’re willing to turn their backs on our allies and empower an enemy rogue state that chants “Death to America” to do it. When you’re taking out a second mortgage to pay for a tank of gas, you can thank Old Joe for doing everything he had to do to get his Iran deal.
On the eve of the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a federal judge directed the Saudi Arabian government to make as many as 24 current and former officials available for depositions about their possible knowledge of events leading up to the airplane attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which killed almost 3,000 Americans. Those officials include Prince Bandar, the former ambassador to the United States, and his longtime chief of staff.
The order was immediately hailed by families of the 9/11 victims as a milestone in their years-long effort to prove that some Saudi officials were either complicit in the attacks or aware of the kingdom’s support for some of the hijackers in the months before they hijacked four American airliners and crashed three of them into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon.
A fourth plane, whose presumed target was the U.S. Capitol, was commandeered by passengers and crashed in Shanksville, Pa., where President Trump and possibly Joe Biden are expected at memorial ceremonies Friday .
“This is a game changer,” Brett Eagleson, whose father was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Towers and who serves as a spokesman for the families, said of the ruling by Federal Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in New York. “This is the most significant ruling we’ve had to date in this lawsuit. And to have this on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11, you couldn’t script this any better. The families are elated.”
The effect of the ruling may depend on the willingness of the Saudi government to make its citizens available for testimony — especially since it includes some high-ranking figures who no longer hold official positions and therefore cannot be compelled to testify. But any open defiance of the court ruling by the Saudis, or resistance from some of the figures named, could further exacerbate a relationship that has already been strained by the 2018 Saudi assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi — an act the CIA has concluded was likely ordered by the country’s de factor ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The question is especially fraught for Bandar, a member of the Saudi royal family who for years maintained a close relationship with senior U.S. government officials (earning him the nickname “Bandar Bush” because of his ties to the Bush family) and whose daughter, Princess Reema bint Bandar, serves as the current Saudi ambassador in Washington. “If he chooses to thumb his nose at a U.S. court, you better believe there will be political fallout from that,” said Eagleson.
A lawyer for the Saudis did not respond to a request for comment Thursday night, and no evidence has surfaced in the case that establishes Bandar had personal knowledge of what the Saudi hijackers were up to. But during his tenure in Washington, from 1983 to 2005, he oversaw a sprawling embassy staff including some, especially those with responsibilities for Islamic affairs, who have been identified in recently surfaced FBI documents as suspects who may have helped provide support for the hijackers in the United States.
The question of possible involvement in the 9/11 attacks by Saudi officials has been a subject of intense debate for years, dividing officials within the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community. The Saudis have consistently denied any connection to the 9/11 hijackers, telling the New York Times and ProPublica in January: “Saudi Arabia is and has always been a close and critical ally of the U.S. in the fight against terrorism.”
But lawyers for the families of the 9/11 victims have been conducting a painstaking investigation that has developed a circumstantial case that two of the hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, received financial and other support from individuals associated with the Saudi government after they arrived in the U.S. after attending an al-Qaida planning summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
As reported by Yahoo News last May, previously undisclosed FBI documents show that a foreign ministry official within the Saudi Embassy, Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, who had duties overseeing the activities of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, had repeated contacts with two figures at the heart of the case and was even suspected of directing them to assist the hijackers. One was Fahad al-Thumairy, a Saudi Islamic Affairs official and radical cleric who served as the imam of the King Fahd Mosque in Los Angeles and met with the two hijackers there. The other was Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi intelligence agent who directly helped the hijackers, finding them an apartment, lending them money and setting them up with bank accounts, after they flew into Los Angeles airport on Jan. 15, 2000.
Al-Jarrah, who until last year served in the Saudi Embassy in Morocco, is among the current and former officials named in the order by Netburn, directing the Saudis to make available for testimony. Al-Thumairy and al-Bayoumi were also cited.
But significantly, the list includes other high-ranking royals who still serve in the government, including Saleh bin Abdulaziz, who served as Minister of Islamic Affairs at the time and, according to the judge’s ruling, extended al-Thuimairy’s time in the United States and promoted him.
In her discussion of Bandar, Judge Netburn noted that lawyers for the Saudi government had persuasively argued that no documents show that he directly oversaw the work of al-Jarrah and al-Thumairy in the United States. But, she added, court documents obtained during the course of discovery — much of which remain under seal — “indicates that Prince Bandar likely has firsthand knowledge … [of] the role that al-Thumairy was assigned by the Kingdom and the diplomatic cover” provided to him.
The judge also authorized the deposition of Ahmed al-Qattan, Bandar’s longtime chief of staff, noting that court documents show that he “likely has unique firsthand knowledge of al-Jarrah and al-Thumairy’s relevant pre-9/11 activity and any post-9/11 ratification of their conduct.”
Video: Helping Saudis Slip Away
The highly disturbing facts about an eerie evacuation right after 9/11.
With the 19th anniversary of 9/11 having just passed, Frontpage Mag editors have deemed it vital to run the special Glazov Gang episode in which Clare Lopez discusses Helping Saudis Slip Away, unveiling the highly disturbing facts about an eerie evacuationright after 9/11.
Don’t miss it!
And make sure to watch our 2-Part-Special with Clare on Post-9/11: 9/11 Came From Riyadh & Tehran and Osama’s Post-9/11 Safe Haven in Iran.
[1] 9/11 Came From Riyadh & Tehran.
[2] Revealed: Osama’s Post-9/11 Safe Haven in Iran.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed 81 people convicted of crimes ranging from killings to belonging to militant groups, the largest known mass execution carried out in the kingdom in its modern history.
The number of executed surpassed even the toll of a January 1980 mass execution for the 63 militants convicted of seizing the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979, the worst-ever militant attack to target the kingdom and Islam's holiest site.
It wasn't clear why the kingdom choose Saturday for the executions, though they came as much of the world's attention remained focused on Russia's war on Ukraine — and as the U.S. hopes to lower record-high gasoline prices as energy prices spike worldwide. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly plans a trip to Saudi Arabia next week over oil prices as well.
The number of death penalty cases being carried out in Saudi Arabia had dropped during the coronavirus pandemic, though the kingdom continued to behead convicts under King Salman and his assertive son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Related video: British PM to visit Saudi Arabia after kingdom executes 81 people
Saudi Arabia: Boris Johnson to visit for talks on oil - as kingdom announces execution of 81 people
Boris Johnson is poised to travel to Saudi Arabia next week for talks on oil as he attempts to move the UK away from dependence on energy supplies from Russia.
The state-run Saudi Press Agency announced Saturday's executions, saying they included those “convicted of various crimes, including the murdering of innocent men, women and children.”
The kingdom also said some of those executed were members of al-Qaida, the Islamic State group and also backers of Yemen's Houthi rebels. A Saudi-led coalition has been battling the Iran-backed Houthis since 2015 in neighboring Yemen in an effort to restore the internationally recognized government to power.
Those executed included 73 Saudis, seven Yemenis and one Syrian. The report did not say where the executions took place.
“The accused were provided with the right to an attorney and were guaranteed their full rights under Saudi law during the judicial process, which found them guilty of committing multiple heinous crimes that left a large number of civilians and law enforcement officers dead,” the Saudi Press Agency said.
“The kingdom will continue to take a strict and unwavering stance against terrorism and extremist ideologies that threaten the stability of the entire world,” the report added. It did not say how the prisoners were executed, though death-row inmates typically are beheaded in Saudi Arabia.
An announcement by Saudi state television described those executed as having “followed the footsteps of Satan” in carrying out their crimes.
The executions drew immediate international criticism.
“The world should know by now that when Mohammed bin Salman promises reform, bloodshed is bound to follow,” said Soraya Bauwens, the deputy director of Reprieve, a London-based advocacy group.
Ali Adubusi, the director of the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights, alleged that some of those executed had been tortured and faced trials “carried out in secret.”
“These executions are the opposite of justice,” he said.
In 2019, the kingdom beheaded 37 Saudi citizens, most of them minority Shiites, in a mass execution across the country for alleged terrorism-related crimes. It also publicly nailed the severed body and head of a convicted extremist to a pole as a warning to others. Such crucifixions after execution, while rare, do occur in the kingdom.
Activists, including Ali al-Ahmed of the U.S.-based Institute for Gulf Affairs, and the group Democracy for the Arab World Now said they believe that over three dozen of those executed Saturday also were Shiites. The Saudi statement, however, did not identify the faiths of those killed.
Shiites, who live primarily in the kingdom's oil-rich east, have long complained of being treated as second-class citizens. Executions of Shiites in the past have stirred regional unrest. Saudi Arabia meanwhile remains engaged in diplomatic talks with its Shiite regional rival Iran to try to ease yearslong tensions.
Sporadic protests erupted Saturday night in the island kingdom of Bahrain — which has a majority Shiite population but is ruled by a Sunni monarchy, a Saudi ally — over the mass execution.
The 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque remains a crucial moment in the history of the oil-rich kingdom.
A band of ultraconservative Saudi Sunni militants took the Grand Mosque, home to the cube-shaped Kaaba that Muslims pray toward five times a day, demanding the Al Saud royal family abdicate. A two-week siege that followed ended with an official death toll of 229 killed. The kingdom’s rulers soon further embraced Wahhabism, an ultraconservative Islamic doctrine.
Since taking power, Crown Prince Mohammed under his father has increasingly liberalized life in the kingdom, opening movie theaters, allowing women to drive and defanging the country's once-feared religious police.
In excerpts of an interview with The Atlantic magazine, the crown prince discussed the death penalty, saying a “high percentage” of executions had been halted through the payment of so-called “blood money” settlements to grieving families.
“If someone killed someone, another person, the family of that person has the right, after going to the court, to apply capital punishment, unless they forgive him. Or if someone threatens the life of many people, that means he has to be punished by the death penalty.”
He added: “Regardless if I like it or not, I don’t have the power to change it.”
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Associated Press writer Aya Batrawy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
