Tag Archives: Mohammed bin Salman

Featured, Foreign Policy, International, Politics, US

Leaked Itinerary of Saudi Prince MBS Reveal Meetings with U.S. Elite

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Washington, D.C.— The leader of Saudi Arabia, 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, widely known as MBS, is currently on a public relations blitz of the United States — and a leaked copy of his itinerary has revealed he will be meeting with the most influential power brokers in American society.

The leaked 36-page document, revealed by The Independent in an exclusive report, detailed the list of powerful individuals MBS has met or is expected to meet with:

On Tuesday alone in New York City, the prince is believed to have met with former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, ex-president Bill and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, New York state senator Chuck Schumer, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres and businessman and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. 

Other notable media meetings include dinner with The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, Rupert Murdoch, the head of The Atlantic’s editorial board Jeffrey Goldberg, meetings with the editorial boards of The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle, as well as interviews with Time and Vanity Fair.  

Current government officials on MBS’s schedule include CIA director (and nominee for new US secretary of state) Mike Pompeo, vice president Mike Pence, senior advisor and unofficial Middle East envoy Jared Kushner, national security adviser HR McMaster and defence secretary James Mattis…

He is also meeting past luminaries such as Barack Obama, John Kerry, Gen David Petraeus and Condoleezza Rice, as well as paying a visit to George W Bush’s Texas ranch. 

Other notable meets outside of politics include Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Tim Cook of Apple and the CEOs of Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, Uber, the Walt Disney Company and Lockheed Martin. 

A major impetus for the “charm offensive” by MBS is to prime the US market for the initial public offering (IPO) of Saudi state oil company Aramco, which experts predict will have a valuation in the range of $1 trillion to $2 trillion dollars. The sale of a 5 percent stake in the company could take place at the end of 2018 or early 2019, depending on market conditions, Prince Mohammed told Reuters in an interview.

Last week MBS took part in the first televised interview with the leader of Saudi Arabia in more than a decade with CBS’s Norah O’Donnell on 60 Minutes. During the interview the Saudi monarch worked to portray himself as a reformer, while noting a distinct difference between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in understanding human rights “standards.”

“Saudi Arabia believes in many of the principles of human rights. In fact, we believe in the notion of human rights, but ultimately Saudi standards are not the same as American standards,” MBS said. “I don’t want to say that we don’t have shortcomings. We certainly do. But naturally, we are working to mend these shortcomings.”

In highlighting these “shortcomings,” The Independent reports:

The Saudi government ordered the mass arrest and detention at Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton of more than 300 princes and business leaders in November last year. The move was touted as as a way to recover billions in lost revenue – but the heavy-handed tactics and reports in TheNew York Times of detainee abuse spooked markets. The Saudi government said the accusations of abuse were “absolutely untrue”, but shares in several Saudi-owned enterprises plummeted and have only just begun to recover.

“Saudi Arabia has always had a public image problem in the West because of the obvious things like women’s rights and beheadings,” Nader Hashemi, director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, told The Independent.

“Ultimately, this trip is to demonstrate he has international legitimacy and support. What this itinerary shows is the immense depth and intimacy of the US-Saudi relationship, going back decades,” Hashemi said.

Civil Liberties, Featured, Government Accountability, International, US

US Court Allows 9/11 Lawsuits Against Saudi Arabia to Proceed

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Manhattan, NY –On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge George Daniels rejected a request by Saudi Arabia to dismiss lawsuits accusing the nation of assisting in the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001, and asserted jurisdiction based on the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), a federal law passed in 2016. Previously, Saudi Arabia had broad based immunity from 9/11 lawsuits in the United States.

JASTA provides a legal exemption to the principle of sovereign immunity, thus allowing foreign governments to be held liable in U.S. courts. Daniels said the plaintiffs’ allegations “narrowly articulate a reasonable basis” for him to assert jurisdiction under JASTA. However, Daniels dismissed claims against a Saudi construction company and two Saudi banks for allegedly providing material support to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to carry out the attacks, claiming he lacked jurisdiction.

According to a report by Reuters:

Daniels said the plaintiffs could try to prove that Saudi Arabia was liable for the alleged activities of Fahad al Thumairy, an imam at the King Fahad Mosque in Culver City, California, and Omar al Bayoumi, said to be an intelligence officer.

They were accused of helping two hijackers acclimate themselves to the United States, and begin preparing for the attacks.

Victims’ families, in court documents, highlighted that nearly all of the hijackers were Saudi citizens, and claimed that Saudi officials and institutions “aided and abetted” the attackers in the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks. Reuters reported that “Daniels’ decision covers claims by the families of those killed, roughly 25,000 people who suffered injuries, and many businesses and insurers.”

The government of Saudi Arabia has steadfastly denied involvement in the 9/11 attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed. Jim Kreindler, an attorney for roughly 850 victims’ families in the case against the Saudi government, told Reuters on Wednesday he is “delighted” that the judge dismissed Saudi Arabia’s motion.

“We have been pressing to proceed with the case and conduct discovery from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, so that the full story can come to light, and expose the Saudi role in the 9/11 attacks,” he added.

[RELATED: Massie on the 28 Pages: Documents Will Challenge Americans to Rethink 9/11]

JASTA was vetoed by then-President Barack Obama, who claimed that the bill “could expose U.S. companies, troops and officials to lawsuits in other countries,” but the Senate overrode the veto by an overwhelming margin to adopt the legislation.

Despite the judge’s ruling, there is still a possibility that the federal government could intervene on behalf of the Saudi government. As previously reported by the author for The Free Thought Project in September 2016, a last-minute amendment was inserted into the JASTA legislation called the “Stay of Actions Pending State Negotiations,” which allows the U.S. attorney general or secretary of state to simply “certify” that the U.S. is “engaged in good-faith discussions with the foreign-state defendant concerning the resolution of claims against the foreign state.”

 

After the amendment was added to the JASTA bill, victims’ families said they felt betrayed by Congress.

How do I feel about the Justice Department being given this power? Not good,” 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser told the NY Post. “Their failure to bring their own Saudi indictment reveals how little they care about holding the Saudis accountable for either their funding or operational support of the 9/11 hijackers.‎

The Middle East Eye reported that “Wednesday’s ruling comes during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the US. President Donald Trump heaped praise on the Saudi royal during a meeting at the White House last week.”