Dilip Simeon's blog

NB: The Saudi Arabian state is a criminal enterprise buttressed by the Western powers and oil money. They have poisoned world politics for decades with a stinking mixture of religious fanaticism and  hard cash. We will all continue to pay the price until it disappears. DS It A message captured in the audio record of the killing of Jamal Khashoggi is widely believed to be an instruction to notify the Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman that  the operation to slay the  Washington Post  journalist  had been carried out successfully.  In the recording, which Turkey has said was passed on to western allies, the comment “tell your boss” that the operatives had carried out their mission, is believed to be the strongest evidence connecting the Crown Prince, also known as MBS, to the murder of  Khashoggi . While the prince was not mentioned by name, American intelligence officials believe, reported by the  New York Times,  that “your boss” was a...

NB : We need not be surprised that the gang of thugs that comprises the Saudi ruling elite think that their filthy money can buy anything on earth. After all they silenced the President of the USA . DS The children of murdered Saudi journalist  Jamal Khashoggi  have received multimillion-dollar homes and are being paid thousands of dollars per month by the kingdom’s authorities, the Washington Post has reported. Khashoggi – a contributor to the Post and a critic of the Saudi government – was killed and dismembered in October at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul by a team of 15 agents sent from Riyadh. His body has not been recovered. Saudi crown prince ran brutal campaign to silence dissent a year before Khashoggi murder Posts on  Khashoggi  murder The payments to his four children – two sons and two daughters – “are part of an effort by  Saudi Arabia  to reach a long-term arrangement with Khashoggi family members, aimed in part at ensuri...

It’s encouraging to hear that Agnes Callamard, the UN’s execution expert, is at last in  Istanbul  to lead the “independent international inquiry” into the killing of  Jamal Khashoggi . Better late than never, perhaps, but the old UN donkey clip-clops upon the world stage according to the politics and courage of the panjandrums beside the East River in New York. Thus Callamard arrived all of four months after Khashoggi was butchered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. And she is now politely asking the Saudis themselves – “respectfully”, she tells us – to give her access to the  murder  scene “at some stage”.  As we all know, Khashoggi wrote the truth about  Saudi Arabia , was lured to his country’s consulate in Istanbul, got strangled, chopped up and secretly buried. And if we’re going to come down hard on those who kill members of our journalistic profession – alas, we’ll have to put aside for the moment all those Turkish journos banged up ...

The crown prince of Saudi Arabia should be investigated over the murder of the dissident journalist  Jamal Khashoggi  because there is “credible evidence” that he and other senior officials are liable for the killing, according to a damning and forensic UN report. In an excoriating 100-page analysis published on Wednesday of what happened to Khashoggi last October, Agnes Callamard, the UN’s special rapporteur, says the death of the journalist was “an international crime”. “It is the conclusion of the special rapporteur that Mr Khashoggi has been the victim of a deliberate, premeditated execution, an extrajudicial killing for which the state of  Saudi Arabia  is responsible under international human rights law,” she says. Using recordings of conversations from inside the Istanbul consulate where Khashoggi was killed, her report pieces together his last moments, and how he was confronted by Saudi officials, one of whom said: “We are coming to get you.” When ...

The CIA has evidence that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, communicated repeatedly with a key aide around the time that a team believed to have been under the aide’s command assassinated Jamal Khashoggi, according to former officials familiar with the intelligence. The adviser, Saud al-Qahtani, topped the list of Saudis who were targeted by US sanctions last month over their suspected involvement in Khashoggi’s killing. US intelligence agencies have evidence that Crown Prince Mohammed and al-Qahtani had 11 exchanges that roughly coincided with the hit team’s advance into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where Khashoggi was murdered. The exchanges are a key piece of information that helped solidify the CIA’s assessment that the crown prince ordered the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and Virginia resident who had been critical of the Saudi government. “This is the smoking gun, or at least the smoking phone call,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA offic...

NB : The Prime Minister of  Pakistan has chosen to indulge in a globalised communal mobilisation of 'the Muslim world' over the Kashmir issue. This is a shameful effort to stoke up violence for the ends of the Pakistan military, whose own record includes genocidal conduct towards Bangladeshis in 1970-71; and against Baluchi's for many decades thereafter. The Saudi government, with whom the Indian government too enjoys close relations; has promoted extremist Islamism for many years, an activity that has always enjoyed the support of the Western powers; that continue to sell it military ordnance . The report below is a reminder of what Imran and his mentors mean by 'Muslim interests'. In recent times, several right-wing governments all over the world have tried to cast us all in the role of sheep and cannon-fodder for their nefarious designs. It is high time we learned to dismiss this kind of politics. DS The Saudi Crown Prince plans to make us forget about the m...

Saudi Arabia  has found itself further isolated over the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi after the business world turned its back on a high-profile investment conference in the kingdom and US officials claimed audio and video recordings had captured the moment the journalist was murdered in Istanbul. The Future Investment Initiative conference, to be held in Riyadh later this month, was rapidly turning into a fiasco on Friday after  most media partners   and several  top business allies pulled out . More were expected to follow. All said they had been disturbed by the circumstances of Khashoggi’s disappearance from the Saudi consulate in Turkey and the lack of credible responses. Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi criticised the regime – and paid with his life Saudi Arabia has been under pressure to explain what happened to Khashoggi after he entered the consulate building at 1.14pm on 2 October.  Turkey  has claimed the exiled journalist and criti...

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia authorised a secret campaign to silence dissenters – which included the surveillance, kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudi citizens – more than a year before the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, according to US officials who have read classified intelligence reports about the campaign. At least some of the clandestine missions were carried out by members of the same team that killed and dismembered Khashoggi in Istanbul in October, suggesting that his killing was a particularly egregious part of a wider campaign to silence Saudi dissidents, according to the officials and associates of some of the Saudi victims. Posts on  Khashoggi  murder Members of the team that killed Khashoggi, which US officials called the Saudi Rapid Intervention Group, were involved in at least a dozen operations starting in 2017, the officials said. Some of the operations involved forcibly repatriating Saudis from other Arab countries and detaining...

NB: This is one of the most poisonous and thuggish regimes in the modern world.  DS Jamal Khashoggi is not the first  Saudi exile to be killed . No one today remembers Nassir al-Sa’id, who disappeared in Beirut in 1979 and has not been seen since. Prince Sultan bin Turki  was kidnapped in Geneva  in 2003. Prince Turki bin Bandar al-Saud, who applied for asylum in France,  disappeared in 2015 . Maj Gen Ali al-Qahtani, an officer in the Saudi National Guard who died while in custody,  showed signs of abuse : his neck appeared twisted and his body was badly swollen. There are many, many others. Thousands languish in jail. Human rights activists branded as terrorists are on death row on charges that Human Rights Watch  says “do not resemble recognisable crimes” . I know of one business leader who was strung upside down and tortured. Nothing has been heard of him since. In Saudi Arabia, you are one social media post away from death. A Saudi plane...

The Saudis are taking a pasting. Video pictures from the Houthis of Saudi soldiers and their allies killed or surrendering inside the Saudi border town of Najran represent a devastating blow to a kingdom which is constantly threatening war against Iran.  If it can’t protect its own armed forces inside Saudi territory, what is the point of wasting time menacing Iran with military action over the massive destruction of the oil facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais almost two weeks ago? This is the same Saudi Arabia which kidnapped Lebanon’s prime minister Saad Hariri, bombed thousands of civilians in Yemen and tried to wipe out Qatar’s independence. Not to mention the little matter of chopping up Jamal Khashoggi almost one year ago in the country’s Istanbul consulate and then secretly burying bits of his body, for which Mohamed bin Salman – perhaps the worst crown prince in Saudi history – now takes national (but not personal) responsibility - More posts on Khashoggi The news that Kin...

Malali Bashir, a journalist, TV and video producer for RFE/RL’s Afghan service and a colleague of Durrani : “The bomb was a deliberate attack on journalists. As they lost their lives one by one, the whole office was in shock. I can’t explain the situation we were in. We didn’t stop the broadcast. Everything was live ... We were being professional, we were giving the facts, we were being balanced, but still, it was emotional because you lost a colleague that was in contact with you yesterday. US Senators convinced that Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi Intercepts solidify CIA assessment that Saudi Prince ordered Khashoggi killing “Maharram had been hired to work on a weekly programme focused on women’s rights and women’s issues. She was the main financial supporter of her family. She told her father she would be like a son, she would be the breadwinner. Her father said she refused to get married because she wanted to keep supporting her ...

GENEVA — A UN human rights expert said Thursday that Saudi Arabia undermined Turkey’s efforts to investigate the death of journalist  Jamal Khashoggi , which she described as a “brutal and premeditated killing” planned and carried out by Saudi officials. Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, made her assessment Thursday after visiting Turkey. Khashoggi, a  Washington Post  columnist who wrote critically about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on 2 October. His remains have not been found. During its 28 January-3 February trip to Turkey, Callamard’s four-member team met with the foreign and justice ministers, the country’s intelligence chief and the prosecutor leading the case... https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/saudi-arabia-undermined-probe-into-jamal-khashoggis-killing-says-un-expert_in_5c5d0774e4b03afe8d661e71?utm_hp_ref=in-homepage More posts on Kh...

An opposition journalist disappears. Anonymous tapes hint at his gruesome murder. An autocrat selling himself as a pro-Western reformer, beset by intrigue at home, is blamed for the death. In moral repugnance, the democratic world shuns him, sparking a foreign policy crisis. If this sounds like the case of Washington Post columnist  Jamal Khashoggi , that’s because it is. But the scenario also describes the sensational disappearance in 2000 of journalist Georgi Gongadze in Ukraine. Back then, the autocrat was President Leonid Kuchma, who had appointed pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko as prime minister. Gongadze’s headless body provided proof of his death. And secret tapes, reportedly made by a bodyguard, pointed at the president. That, at least, is the conventional wisdom. The real Gongadze story is a cautionary tale about believing authoritarian governments in sensational crimes where their leaders have much to gain or lose. That may seem obvious. Indeed, most observers ...

An episode of “Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj” has been removed by Netflix in Saudi Arabia after the country expressed complaints about material in the show. “Now would be a good time to reassess our relationship with Saudi Arabia. And I mean that as a Muslim and as an American,” says Minhaj in the episode titled “Saudi Arabia.” He goes on to discuss the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October and was revealed to have been slain on orders from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman . Khashoggi’s body has not been found. The comedian then addresses the crown prince, referring to him as MBS, by critiquing the United States’ relationship with him and Saudi Arabia. “MBS asked, ‘Why the outrage?’ and frankly, MBS’ confusion is completely understandable. He has been getting away with autocratic shit like [Khashoggi’s killing] for years with almost no blowback from the international community,” says Minhaj. Minh...

One option for Trump, now he knows Netanyahu’s fate, would be to turn on the Saudis, whose intelligence men chopped off poor  Jamal Khashoggi ’s head a year ago and did other unmentionable things to him before disposing of him down a consulate drain, fountain or sink. Just what did the Saudi crown prince know about this abysmal, disgraceful affair? And let me add another question: was Khashoggi’s face turned towards Mecca when he was buried? Perhaps Mike Pompeo could actually ask Mohamed bin Salman, smiling broadly when he met him on Wednesday, what he knows about this gruesome killing of a very old friend of mine? The Saudis are our allies – the Brits are still sponsoring them – and they tell us that the drone strikes by the Houthis/Iranians were “a test of global will”. And was our response to Khashoggi’s murder also a test of global will? ..   I was surprised, these hot few days in the Middle East, that no one – not Iran, not America, no...

The government has been accused of “putting profit before people’s lives” ahead of the start of a High Court case aimed at stopping the UK from exporting  arms to Saudi Arabia.  The case is being brought by the group  Campaign Against Arms Trade  (CAAT), which claims there is “overwhelming evidence” that British-made jets and bombs are being used by Saudi-led forces to violate international humanitarian law in  Yemen. CAAT says more than 10,000 people have been killed since a Saudi-led coalition began  fighting Houthi rebels  in 2015, and UK-made weapons have helped create “a humanitarian catastrophe”. CAAT is being backed by other groups being represented at the hearing, including Human Rights Watch, Oxfam and Amnesty International, whose strategic litigation director Lucy Claridge said outside court: “It is time for the UK Government to stop putting profit before people's lives. “By selling billions of pounds worth of arms to Saudi Arabi...

“Saudi detainees including women activists have alleged that authorities mistreated them with unspeakable cruelty, including electric shocks, whippings and sexual harassment, and new revelations of medical reports appear to confirm what they have said for months.” Political prisoners in  Saudi Arabia  are said to be suffering from malnutrition, cuts, bruises and burns, according to leaked medical reports that are understood to have been prepared for the country’s ruler, King Salman. The reports seem to provide the first documented evidence from within the heart of the royal court that political prisoners are facing severe physical abuse, despite the government’s denials that men and women in custody are being tortured. The Guardian has been told the medical reports will be given to  King Salman  along with reco-mmendations that are said to include a potential pardon for all the prisoners, or at least early release for those with serious health problems. The...

Where is the central repository of the leaked information located, and who controls it?    While it is par for the course for governments in India to put political opponents, media persons and diplomats under surveillance, the recent use of Israeli-origin Pegasus software may be particularly egregious. Its plug-and-play spyware converts a mobile phone into a surveillance device.  The latest Pegasus leaks leave little doubt that its use has undermined India’s democratic institutions. This includes the judiciary, Election Commission, the Parliamentary Opposition, Cabinet of ministers, and media. However one important ramification of the Pegasus spyware seems to have escaped the debate: the possibility that national security could be compromised if the intelligence gathered by Pegasus were available to a third country.  By using Pegasus could the Modi government inadvertently have opened itself to strategic blackmail? Would not the organisation that has the list of targ...

Trump, like his dangerous Middle Eastern allies, doesn’t want to live in heaven. He craves the pleasures of leadership. He enjoys risk. He believes not in history or morality. He believes in himself. That is why a lot of Arab despots rather like Trump. They have much in common..  Except for understanding. And here’s the problem. Arab dictators, delusional though they may be, have got us taped. They see through our lies and our arms sales and our lust for oil and our fraudulent desire that Jeffersonian democracy embrace the Muslim world. But we simply do not comprehend the Middle East.  Middle East dictators, we like to believe, live in heaven. They have palaces, servants, vast and wealthy families, millions of obedient people and loyal armies who constantly express their love for their leader, not to mention huge secret police forces to ensure they don’t forget this, and masses of weapons to defend themselves, supplied, usually, by us. These tyrants – autocrats or “strongm...

"Is there anything I would like to add to his epitaph? A line by May Sarton that he would have enjoyed: One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being" NB : A sensitive meditation on contemporary politics by the iconic chronicler of the Cold War (and the hot wars surrounding it). Le Carre is a humane, brilliant and non-ideological mind - with first-hand knowledge of the worlds' biggest tragedies. His books are literary masterpieces, not pulp spy-fiction This speech, delivered in Stockholm on January 30, is worth reading. DS They wore you out, those American nuclear warriors. I have a particularly unpleasant memory – and maybe so had Palme – of the US government’s twenty-something defence analysts who lived on rock music and Coca-Cola while they calculated to the last half-million or so how many of us would be turned to ash in a first strike... I’m not just a remainer. I’m a European through and through, and the rats have taken over the ship...