Saudi king chides UK on terrorism

Displaying a lack of irony that borders on breathtaking, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah - the leader of the country which supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers who carried out the 9-11 attacks on New York - has criticised Britain's attitude to tackling terrorism.

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.

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says Whitehall officials have strenuously denied this, and a subsequent 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 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.

Not only do Whitehall strenuously deny that Saudi Arabia offered such intelligence but I have written on this blog before about Saudi Arabia's outrageous threat to withhold intelligence regarding terrorism from Britain unless the UK government halted an investigation into the fact that Prince Bandar appeared to have been illegally paid billions of dollars in the Al-Yamamah deal.

And then Jack Straw, in a final attempt to convince us that this was, indeed, about "national security", dropped the bombshell:

Yesterday Mr Straw clashed with David Howarth, the Lib Dem MP for Cambridge, during heated exchanges in the Commons. Mr Howarth told MPs: "The government called off the inquiry for reasons of national security but it now turns out that the threat to national security was the threat of withdrawal of cooperation from the very same quarter that was subject to investigation for corruption. Isn't it simply shameful and dishonourable to give way to that sort of pressure?"

Mr Straw replied: "The world is not perfect ... the government faces a choice of seeing cooperation on national security being withdrawn, and it rightly made the judgement. We face some very serious terrorist threats. We vitally need cooperation as we have received, from among others, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

So we really don't need any lectures in how to deal with terrorism from a man whose country supplied so many of the attackers on 9-11 and, indeed, from the leader of a country which threatened to withhold vital intelligence unless we halted investigations into corruption charges against Prince Bandar.

There are even allegations that two of the 9-11 hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, so it really is stupefying to have to listen to lectures on the need to take terrorism seriously from such a tainted source.

What's he planning to lecture us on next? Women's rights?

Did you know that Saudi Arabia treats its women one barely noticeable notch above that of the brutal Taliban? Saudi women cannot vote. They are not allowed to drive. They cannot be admitted to a hospital or examined by a doctor or travel abroad or leave the house without the express permission and/or company of an immediate male family member, and of course they must, at all times, be covered from head to toe in black sackcloth and if they dare venture outside or break the fashion code in any way they could very well be arrested and jailed indefinitely and beaten and even killed, no questions asked.

Human rights?

Political prisoners in Saudi Arabia are regularly tortured. Journalists are regularly arrested and persecuted and beaten for being too outspoken against the deeply repressed and closed kingdom. Human rights groups have been appalled by the oppressive and dictatorial Saudi society for years, perhaps no more so than following 9/11, when scrutiny was at an all-time high due to the obvious Saudi kingdom's connections to al Qaeda and terrorism.

And, at a time when the Americans are chastising Iran for interfering in the Iraq war, why are we ignoring the fact that the majority of suicide bombers in Iraq are actually from Saudi Arabia?

We are sick to death of listening to George Bush feign concern for the freedom of Iraqi's and Iranians whilst blithely ignoring the worst excesses of the oppressive regime of Saudi Arabia.

Human rights only appear to matter to the US when they coincide with it's geopolitical concerns. The silence and complicity of the Bush regime towards Saudi Arabia bears out that fact.

But to have to listen to King Abdullah - of all bloody people - lecturing us on the need to take terrorism seriously is like being scolded by Liberace for being too camp. Abdullah's comments are simply jaw dropping in their audacity.

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Tags: King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia, 9-11, terrorism, UK, Prince Bandar, the Al-Yamamah deal