Another Cover-up for the Saudis?

by CLIFF KINCAID

The possible involvement of a Saudi in the Boston terror attacks is being curiously ignored or downplayed by most of the mainstream media. Steve Emerson, Glenn Beck, and others have pressed for answers, however. Beck has issued a full report with updates on the controversy.

When Rep. Jeff Duncan, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, questioned Homeland Security Department Secretary Janet Napolitano on the matter, she claimed his questions were “not worthy of an answer” and that much of the reporting has been “wrong.” She later said the Saudi was on a watch list but had no involvement.

Saudi Ambassador to the United States Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir issued a statement condemning the bombings in Boston and offering his condolences to the families of the victims.

On Twitter, according to one report from Ahmed Al Omran, a Saudi blogger and journalist, “many Saudis expressed their fear that one of their countrymen could be involved in the bombings. According to the Saudi cultural attaché in the US, there are more than 1,000 Saudi students going to school in Boston.” Al Omran graduated with a Master’s degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.

The reason for the sensitivity may be that the Obama Administration has been working with Saudi Arabia in “counterterrorism,” and that the country has served as a base for Obama’s drone attacks on al-Qaeda leaders he wants eliminated. This fact was covered up by our major newspapers, including The Washington Post and New York Times, for over a year.

The Post finally blew the whistle on its own cover-up, acknowledging that “an informal arrangement among several news organizations” had been in existence to protect the Saudi role in the drone attacks….

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Possible human trafficking investigated at Saudi diplomatic compound in Virginia

By Robert Spencer

….While the savage exploitation of girls and young women is an unfortunately cross-cultural phenomenon, only in Islamic law does it carry anything approaching divine sanction. Here is yet another human rights scandal occasioned by Islamic law that the international human rights community and the mainstream media cravenly ignore.

“Possible Human Trafficking Investigated at Saudi Diplomatic Compound in Virginia,” by Jackie Bensen for NBC Washington, May 1 (thanks to all who sent this in):

A case of “possible human trafficking” at a Saudi diplomatic compound in Virginia is under investigation, Homeland Security confirmed to News4.Agents from U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement/Homeland Security Investigations and Fairfax County police were called to a home in the 6000 block of Orris Street in McLean overnight and, in the words of a source familiar with the investigation, “rescued” two women. One woman reportedly tried to flee by squeezing through a gap in the front gate as it was closing.

It’s not clear if the women, who sources say are from the Philippines, called investigators to the home themselves or if someone else did.

“Homeland Security Investigations DC did encounter two potential victims of trafficking and the investigation is ongoing,” a D.C.-based spokesman for ICE/Homeland Security investigations told News4.

The investigation is in its very early stages and complicated by the possibility some of those involved may have diplomatic immunity.

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Time to Derail the Saudi “Visa Express”

by Clare M. Lopez

One of the more striking—and worrisome—aspects of the April 2013 Boston Marathon terror attack and the cross-border al-Qa’eda/Iran plot to bomb a passenger railway that runs between New York City and Toronto, Canada is the realization that all four suspects so far identified in the two plots had entered legally into the United States and Canada, respectively. Crossing legally into Western countries targeted for terror attacks, entering immigrant and refugee streams without drawing attention from security services, and blending into existing multicultural communities while establishing personas indistinguishable from those of tens of thousands of other new arrivals, appears to be a tried and true modus operandi for Islamic jihadis. It definitely worked for the fifteen of nineteen 9/11 hijackers who were Saudis.

Given the reality of that threat, brought home yet again to North America with these two latest plots, now is probably not the best time for the current administration to revive the visa program that allowed the Saudi government to help screen visa applicants for fast-track entry into the U.S. And yet, that is exactly what just happened: an agreement between the U.S. and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was reached in January 2013 that would accept Saudi applicants into the Global Entry Trusted Traveler program. Prince Mohammed bin Nayefheads the Saudi Interior Ministry that will screen Saudi applicants when the pilot program begins in 2014. To his credit, bin Nayef has led an internal Saudi crackdown against al-Qa’eda and survived an al-Qa’eda assassination attempt in retaliation. On the other side of the ledger, however, Saudi Arabia is the world’s foremost sponsor of both Islamic jihad and Da’wa [Islamic religious outreach], the source of funding and inspiration for promoters of Islamic Sharia law and anti-Western suicide bombers alike across the globe.

As revealed in early stages of the recent plot investigations, none of these latest accused terrorists in the Boston Marathon and passenger train plots sneaked into Canada or the U.S. or paid a coyote to get himself past border controls. Rather, all of them (or their families) worked the legal system, then later (even years later) were activated—or recruited and then activated—to carry out an attack mission. According to The Iconoclast, the Tsarnaev brothers had been admitted to the U.S., along with multiple members of their extended family, under the aegis of the Refugee Act of 1980. Tamerlan, the elder brother, arrived in 2006 and was granted Permanent Resident status, while Dzhokhar, who arrived on a tourist visa in 2002, was given asylum status as a Chechen refugee from Dagestan, and eventually achieved U.S. citizenship on 11 September 2012.

In the Canada-U.S. railway bombing plot, Tunisian-born Chiheb Esseghaier moved to Canada in 2008 and was “granted permanent residency under Quebec’s skilled worker program,” according to the Canadian National Post. Accused co-conspirator Raed Jaser, who was born in the United Arab Emirates, arrived in Canada with his parents and two brothers in 1993 on false French passports; although denied a request for asylum based on claims of persecution in Germany, most of the family eventually obtained Canadian citizenship. Jaser might have too, except that he racked up a criminal record while awaiting his final status ruling. However, because Jaser somehow was listed as a “stateless Palestinian” whose father had left the newly-established State of Israel in 1948 (instead of remaining to become an Israeli citizen), there was no place to where Canada could deport him, despite multiple efforts.

Every one of the nineteen 9/11 attack hijackers entered the U.S. on a valid passport and visa, too….

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Barbarism in the birthplace of Islam: Eye Gouging and Paralyzing: Saudi Arabia’s Tribal Justice

by Samuel Westrop

A Saudi court ordered Ali al-Khawahir, a 24-year-old Saudi citizen, to be surgically paralyzed as punishment for a crime he committed as a 14-year-old, that had left his victim paralyzed. The Western media has described the court’s ruling as an “eye for an eye punishment.”

According to reports in the Saudi Gazette, Khawahir stabbed a childhood friend in the spine during an argument ten years ago. The punishment, as decided by the Sharia courts, is similar to other methods used to administer justice, including beheading, flogging, stoning to death and eye gouging.

This arrangement is the product of the religious and tribal structure upon which Saudi Arabia’s system of justice and law enforcement is based. Although Saudi Arabia is a theocracy in which the ruler is responsible for applying Islamic law, the actual system of justice revolves around a nexus of power and money, a structure that protects the tribal and religious values that keep Saudi Arabia firmly in the control of the House of Saud.

In 1971, the judicial system was revised — a move that consolidated the power of those at the top. Power-holders across the country were tasked with appointing a number of quasi-judicial bodies to deal with administrative and economic disputes. With no legislative authority, however, these courts required the clerics to sanction their existence. For this very purpose, the clerics set up the Institute for Religio-Legal Opinions.

The Institute has its own enforcers, known as the Mutawayyin – The Committee for the Exhortation to Good and Interdiction to Evil – who ensure that Islamic values are implemented. The Committee’s most notable moment occurred in 2002, when its members prevented young girls from leaving a burning building because they were not wearing headscarves; at least fourteen of the girls were burned to death.

Crucially, Sharia Law, applied in both the criminal and civil courts, is not codified. With no precedence or structure, except for half-a-dozen defined crimes, Saudi judges, all of whom are Wahhabi clerics, are free to implement punishments in accordance with their own beliefs.

In many ways, the system is feudal. As in medieval Europe, a blood-money payment to the victim’s family is evidently often permissible in lieu of legal retribution – an alternative to punishment presumably designed to prevent bad blood between different communities or tribes. In the case of Ali al-Khawahir, the price of avoiding paralysis is one million Saudi riyals ($266,000) – a price the family cannot afford.

Money, it seems, is the ultimate guarantor, facilitating both power and compromise. In 1982, Ghazi Algosaibi, the Western-educated Saudi Minister for Industry, proclaimed that the man who takes bribes is “active and intelligent, usually enjoying the respect of others.”

As some families are able to afford such financial redress, for those with wealth or influence, therefore, certain crimes are alluring and unconstrained modes of behavior. More often than not, those who can afford to pay blood-money are clerics or members of the 3000-strong royal family. Recently, for example, in Saudi Arabia a “celebrity” cleric raped and murdered his 5-year-old daughter, but was released after he paid the prescribed blood money to the child’s mother. The King, however, after a public outcry, ultimately overruled the court and placed the cleric back in prison.

Under such a system, however, not only can rich males can buy their way out of the judicial system, butaccording to one Saudi human rights group, the law rules that a father cannot be executed for murdering his children, and husbands cannot be executed for killing their wives.

Any discussion of inequality before the law however, is futile. Saudi’s justice seems designed solely to protect the power-holders. The legitimacy of the justice system, almost entirely based on Sharia law, is guaranteed by the Wahhabi clerics, who are rewarded with authority by the royal family….

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Money Jihad Blog’s Important Posts on Financial Aspects of Chechan Jihad

Shariah Finance Watch

In the wake of last week’s horrific Jihadist terrorist attack in Boston, we have seen very little discussion as to the possible financial aspects of the Tsarnaev brothers’ Jihad.

By all accounts, the Tsarnaevs were far from destitute. Yet there is no indication anywhere that they had jobs. They evidently had credit cards, so their transactions can be tracked. They had an apartment, one wife, a child, at least one car and a health club membership. One traveled overseas, the other reportedly liked to smoke pot. Both of their parents were back in Russia.

How were they living? How were they supporting themselves?

Beyond these specific questions focusing on the Tsarnaevs, there is the wider issue of the Chechan jihad overall and luckily there has been some analysis as to the financial aspects of that warfare to establish the religion. It comes to us courtesy of Money Jihad blog:

First, Money Jihad blog introduces us to the “Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade,” which was identified long ago as the primary conduit for funding the Chechan Jihadis. Where did the money come from? From Saudi Arabia, of course…

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