Saudi Prince Defects, Discusses Dictatorship
August 13th, 2013Via: Russia Today:
Saudi Arabia, a major supporter of opposition forces in Syria, has increased crackdown on its own dissenters, with 30,000 activists reportedly in jail. In an exclusive interview to RT a Saudi prince defector explained what the monarchy fears most.
“Saudi Arabia has stepped up arrests and trials of peaceful dissidents, and responded with force to demonstrations by citizens,” Human Rights Watch begins the country’s profile on its website.
Political parties are banned in Saudi Arabia and human rights groups willing to function legally have to go no further than investigating things like corruption or inadequate services. Campaigning for political freedoms is outlawed.
One of such groups, which failed to get its license from the government, the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), was cited by AFP as saying the kingdom was holding around 30,000 political prisoners.
Saudi Prince Khaled Bin Farhan Al-Saud, who spoke to RT from Dusseldorf, Germany, confirmed reports of increased prosecution of anti-government activists and said that it’s exactly what forced him to defect from his family. He accused the monarchy of corruption and silencing all voices of dissent and explained how the Saudi mechanism for suppression functioned.
“There is no independent judiciary, as both police and the prosecutor’s office are accountable to the Interior Ministry. This ministry’s officials investigate ‘crimes’ (they call them crimes), related to freedom of speech. So they fabricate evidence, don’t allow people to have attorneys”, the prince told RT Arabic. “Even if a court rules to release such a ‘criminal’, the Ministry of Interior keeps him in prison, even though there is a court order to release him. There have even been killings! Killings! And as for the external opposition, Saudi intelligence forces find these people abroad! There is no safety inside or outside the country.”
Research Credit: windhorse
The thing is, this guy is a very, very minor prince, from a so-called “cadet” branch of the main royal line, and quite far from the powers that be. Most of the princes from those branches live more or less middle-class lives (their monthly stipend would barely support them) and the idea that he has any sort of insight into what the senior members of the family are thinking (as he claims in the interview) is nonsense. It’s not like the royal family have gatherings where they discuss these things (there would be thousands of princes if you included everyone) so he probably would know about as much as we do. Keep in mind all of this comes mostly from the Iranian press (which is engaged in a propaganda war with the Saudis) and he has ties to Saad al-Faqih, a well-known opposition figure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%27ad_Al-Faqih It looks like the opposition was pretty happy to get hold of this disgruntled guy, assuming no one would know he’s a nobody, and they’re on the circuit making the most of it.