RUTHFULLY YOURS

One of the early signs to appear in English in Cairo apparently told Mubarak to “Pack Bags for Saudi Arabia.”

The so-called Arab Street knows something that most Americans don’t–and that the media has thus far missed.

For decades, Saudi Arabia has sheltered the most brutal, anti-American and anti-Semitic dictators and strongmen that the Islamic world has to offer. Despite half a dozen successive U.S. administrations’ claims to the contrary the Saudis are not the benign trustworthy American allies they seek to be portrayed as. The rogue’s gallery of criminals that the House of Saud has given sanctuary and protection to should be clear evidence of that.

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the former president of Tunisia, is just the latest to take advantage of Saudi hospitality.

A BBC World Service radio program from January 24, 2011 asked “Is Saudi Arabia a haven for ousted leaders?”

Uganda’s former dictator Idi Amin is a key part of the BBC story. Amin died in August 2003 at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He had lived in Saudi Arabia for nearly three decades. Amin was a Muslim.

A Kenya-based reporter from Italy named Riccardo Orizio speaks at length about Amin with the BBC. Showing a shocking lack of journalistic standards Orizio provides no background on Amin. He does not recount anything about Amin’s reign of terror or the support for international Palestinian-Arab terrorism that made him one of the world’s most notorious dictators in the 1970s.

Incredibly, Orizio tells his listeners that “technically (Amin) was on an extended hajj / pilgrimage” to Islam’s holy cities in Saudi Arabia. This is the explanation for Saudi Arabia’s penchant for offering asylum to despots that we have been looking for. The Saudi royal family, as the caretakers of the holy sites of Mecca and Medina, must offer fellow Muslims their protection, we are told.

What is worth noting here is that Orizio states that the “the Saudi royal family gave him a pension” and that Amin and his family “survived in a comfortable, middle-class way” and lived “in a rather large house.” He further explains that Amin lived like “a regular Saudi middle-class citizen” and that “he was extremely grateful to the royal Saudi family for allowing him to survive.”

None of the participants in the program challenged Orizio to explain his incredible naiveté or the inconsistencies of his statements. Was Amin a citizen or a pilgrim? Why was he given a pension?

Here’s a brief list of some of the other infamous criminals in addition to Amin and Tunisia’s Ben Ali that found a haven in Saudi Arabia:

Rashid Aali al-Gaylani was the pro-Nazi leader of Iraq in the early 1940s. When he lost power he fled to Berlin. In Berlin he met with Hitler. After the defeat of the Nazis Gaylani found asylum in Saudi Arabia for a time.

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif were given refuge in Saudi Arabia when they were exiled.

Fatah terrorist Abu Nidal lived for a time in Saudi Arabia.

Whether these riots now spreading across the Arab World eventually lead to true democratic reforms or extremist Islamic regimes only time will tell. What we can be certain of, however, is that Saudi Arabian petro-dollars will continue to be spent on harboring some of the world’s most evil men for many years to come. That is, unless they are overthrown.