Saudi Arabia: Arab World's Leading Crime Family

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

The Saudis are guilty of virtually every criminal act imaginable and a good many more most people never thought of.

Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman's (MBS) ordered murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 was a drop in the regime's sordid bucket.

Saudi despotism rears its ugly head daily at home and cross-border. 

It partners with Washington's war OF terror. 

It's cozy with apartheid Israel, indifferent toward long-suffering Palestinians, hostile to the notion of their self-determination.

The Saudi regime is a crime family, masquerading as a nation-state.

It's the public beheadings, public whippings world capital, notorious as well for brutal torture, political imprisonments, subjugation of women, forced disappearances, and eliminating non-believes in how it operates.

Professional executioners in the kingdom at times behead multiple victims in a single day, most often for the crime of free expression, human rights activism, or other forms of dissent against despotic rule.

Religious police perform public whippings for not praying at designated times when in public, improper dress code, non-observance of gender segregation, and virtually anything else Riyadh disapproves of.

They break into private residences violently on suspicion of nonconformity with Wahhabist extremism.

Saudi rule is the most extreme form of Sunni Islam, calling Shias and other non-Wahhabis "infidels," encouraging intolerance, supporting terrorism.

All of the above is what Saudi Arabia is all about and more.

Its regimes always ruled extrajudicially, mimicking how the West operates in its own way.

Anyone accused of minor offenses, true or invented, can be beheaded, whipped or stoned to death brutally.

The State Department annually explains Saudi human rights abuses and other criminality.

The list is virtually endless. Because the kingdom partners with US imperial lawlessness, is the largest purchaser of its arms, and is the most oil-rich country in the most oil-rich part of the world, it's considered an important US strategic ally.

A Friday released DNI report that accused MBS of killing Jamal Khashoggi surprised no one.

In October 2018, he was murdered, his body dismembered inside the kingdom's Istanbul consulate, most of it dissolved, some remains returned to the kingdom.

The DNI report accused MBS of "approv(ing)" what happened, adding:

He controls virtually all "decision-making in the kingdom."

His father king Salman is too frail and in poor health to handle things on his own.

So he virtually abdicated authority to his favorite son — who's widely feared and despised by ruling family members and others.

Unsurprisingly, the Saudi foreign ministry responded as follows to the US report, saying:

"The kingdom's government categorically rejects the abusive and incorrect conclusions contained in the report about the kingdom's leadership (sic)." 

The US report "cannot be accepted in any way (sic)."

Riyadh rejects anything that "prejudice(s) its leadership, sovereignty and independence of its judiciary (sic)."

MBS' fingerprints were all over Khashoggi's brutal murder.

He rules with an iron fist. No one dares challenge him or acts without his approval.

In response to his responsibility for killing Khashoggi, UN Human Rights Council's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard said the following:

The US "should impose sanctions against (MBS) as it has done for the other perpetrators – targeting his personal assets but also his international engagements," adding: 

Washington should "take the lead in ensuring accountability for this crime and for setting in place the international mechanisms to prevent and punish such acts in the future."

Maintaining longstanding ties to the kingdom for strategic reasons alone matters for Washington.

The worst of its criminality has been overlooked by the US and West for decades.

Seventy Biden regime-designated Saudi patsies will take a fall for MBS — to be punished by slap-on-the-wrist sanctions.

MBS is free to kill, torture, commit other high crimes with impunity, and continue partnering with US high crimes of war, against humanity, and other criminality. 

Case closed.

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman). Contact at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

"How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War"

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"Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity"

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