Thread: Saudi King: Britain soft on terrorism

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has accused Britain of not doing enough to fight international terrorism, which he says could take 20 or 30 years to beat.

He was speaking in a BBC interview ahead of a state visit to the UK - the first by a Saudi monarch for 20 years.

He also said Britain failed to act on information passed by the Saudis which might have averted terrorist attacks.

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says Whitehall officials have strenuously denied this.

King Abdullah is expected to arrive in the UK on Monday afternoon; his visit begins formally on Tuesday.

In the BBC interview he said the fight against terrorism needed much more effort by countries such as Britain and that al-Qaeda continued to be a big problem for his country.

BBC world affairs correspondent John Simpson says King Abdullah is annoyed that the rest of the world has largely failed to act on his proposal for a UN clearing house for information about terrorism.

Terror 'information'
Speaking through an interpreter, the Saudi monarch said he believed most countries were not taking the issue seriously, "including, unfortunately, Great Britain".

"We have sent information to Great Britain before the terrorist attacks in Britain but unfortunately no action was taken. And it may have been able to maybe avert the tragedy."

The Saudi leadership maintains that it passed the UK information that might have averted the London bombings of 2005 if it had been acted on.

An investigation by Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) found no evidence of any intelligence passed on by the Saudis that could have prevented the 7 July 2005 bombings, the BBC's Frank Gardner said.
The king's visit has provoked controversy over Britain's relationship with Saudi Arabia.

A demonstration is planned outside the Saudi embassy in London later in the week in protest at the country's human rights record.

And acting Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable has announced he is boycotting the visit, citing the corruption scandal over Al Yamamah arms deal, and the Saudis' human rights record.

"I think it's quite wrong that as a country we should give the leader of Saudi Arabia this honour," he said.

'Long-standing friendship'
Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International UK, urged Prime Minister Gordon Brown to tell the Saudis that their human rights record was "totally unacceptable".

She added: "Mr Brown's message should be - reforms need to come, and they need to come quickly."

The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has pulled out of a scheduled meeting with the Saudi delegation to spend time with his wife and their newly-adopted second son.

It is understood that Mr Miliband is returning from the United States, where he was present at the birth of Jacob. He was replaced by Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells.
A spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said that the decision to invite King Abdullah was a reflection of the "long-standing friendship" between the two nations.

I think his idea about a UN clearing house for terrorist info is very sound.

Strange source though- members of his own family reputedly help fund al Qaeda.

Sure it's sound, then the terrorists only need to infiltrate one public database to find out who knows what about who.

^^I know how you feel.

Imagine belonging to a forum where, seemingly, every third post criticizes your country, cars, food, language, airplanes, education, military, sports, culture, history, economy, music etc. etc.

I feel the same. They're cheeky c*n*s. Who the fuck are they to tell us we're not doing things right?

But at the end of the day, it's all just noise. But wait, King Abdullah is royalty. Must we blindly respect him too?

I shouldn't have put it like that.

What I mean is, while his lot are choppping off hands & genitals, on a daily basis, he hasn't got much room for talk about anybody not doing anything to protect anyone.

Something like that.

He's got an agenda.

Originally Posted by Texpat

^^I know how you feel.

Imagine belonging to a forum where, seemingly, every third post criticizes your country, cars, food, language, airplanes, education, military, sports, culture, history, economy, music etc. etc.

I feel the same. They're cheeky c*n*s. Who the fuck are they to tell us we're not doing things right?

But at the end of the day, it's all just noise. But wait, King Abdullah is royalty. Must we blindly respect him too?

Give him lots of money and crown a peasant, but that's what he'll always be.

Originally Posted by keda

Sure it's sound, then the terrorists only need to infiltrate one public database to find out who knows what about who.

Why on earth would a 'UN clearing house for terrorist info' be on a "public database"!?! A convienient idea if scaremongering's your bag, but quite divorced from commonsense and reality I think.

Whoever is removing posts from threads, please have the courtesy to actually read the thread and remove subsequent threads that refer to the one being removed.

Hatchet jobs...

sniff, sniff.

but then what do you expect from

Originally Posted by Texpat

a forum where, seemingly, every third post criticizes your country, cars, food, language, airplanes, education, military, sports, culture, history, economy, music etc. etc.

Don't be so hard on him, we can learn a great deal about terrorists and their funding from this leader of the moderate muslim world.

Originally Posted by Texpat

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has accused Britain of not doing enough to fight international terrorism

Well, the intelliegnce services in the UK dont take out full page adverts in The Times to let everybody know what they have been doing each week. M15 and M16 have done nothing but investigate terrorism since the end of the cold war. They do a good job, apart from the odd dead brazilian

Yes, dont be so hard on him while he condones this sort of thing.

Saudi defends gang-rape victim punishment

Reuters | Wednesday, 21 November 2007



Saudi Arabia has defended a court's decision to sentence a woman who was gang-raped to 200 lashes of the whip, after the United States described the verdict as "astonishing".

The 19-year-old Shi'ite woman from the town of Qatif in the Eastern Province and an unrelated male companion were abducted and raped by seven men in 2006.
Ruling according to Saudi Arabia's strict reading of Islamic law, a court had originally sentenced the woman to 90 lashes and the rapists to jail terms of between 10 months and five years. It blamed the woman for being alone with an unrelated man.
Last week the Supreme Judicial Council increased the sentence to 200 lashes and six months in prison and ordered the rapists to serve between two and nine years in jail.
The ruling provoked rare criticism from the United States, which is trying to persuade Saudi Arabia to attend a Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland next week.
A State Department spokesman told reporters on Monday that "most (people) would find this relatively astonishing that something like this happens".
The court also took the unusual step of initiating disciplinary procedures against her lawyer, Abdul-Rahman al-Lahem, forcibly removing him from the case for having talked about it to the media.
"The Ministry of Justice welcomes constructive criticism ... The system allows appeals without resort to the media," said Tuesday's statement issued on the official news agency SPA.
It berated media for not specifying that three judges, not one, issued the recent ruling and reiterated that the "charges were proven" against the woman.
It also repeated the judges' attack against Lahem last week, saying he had "spoken insolently about the judicial system and challenged laws and regulations".
Lahem was not available for comment.
New York-based Human Rights Watch has called on King Abdullah, who last month announced plans to overhaul the system, to drop all charges against the woman.
A series of erratic verdicts have focused attention on the Saudi legal system, which is dominated by clerics who adhere to the kingdom's austere Sunni form of Islamic law. Personal status law remains uncodified and the system does not recognise the concept of precedent