organization:saudi embassy in washington

Hajj Closed to Iranians After Year of Discord | Foreign Policy
▻http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/12/hajj-closed-to-iranians-after-year-of-discord

Last year, almost 75,000 Iranians went on the hajj — the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, a requirement of Islam, that many scrimp and save for years to afford.

This year, the Islamic Republic is set to send zero.

Since last year’s hajj, tensions between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia have peaked. Disaster marked the 2015 pilgrimage: A stampede, one of many in the hajj’s history, cost at least 2,426 lives, 464 of them Iranian. Iran said Saudi “incompetence” and “mismanagement” were to blame.

Relations between Riyadh and Tehran worsened in January, when Iranian protesters ransacked part of the Saudi Embassy after Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. And both countries back different factions in the civil wars, which have come to serve as proxy battles, in Syria and Yemen.

On Thursday, an Iranian official told the country’s state media that negotiations to keep hajj open had come to an impasse. “We did whatever we could, but it was the Saudis who sabotaged” it, said Ali Jannati, Iran’s minister of culture and Islamic guidance.

Saudi officials contested that narrative. “The decision not to participate in this year’s hajj is a decision made solely by the Iranian government in what is clearly an effort to politicize the hajj,” a spokesperson for the Saudi embassy in Washington said in an email to Foreign Policy. “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has always welcomed all pilgrims. Any government that hinders or prevents its citizens from exercising their right to perform the pilgrimage, shall be held accountable before Allah and the entire world.”

Even if Tehran decided not to closed off the 2016 hajj, however, few Iranians would be able to go. Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran after January’s embassy incident in Tehran. Without the help of consulates or an embassy, Iranians looking to obtain hajj visas would have had to travel to other countries to apply. Even those willing and able to travel abroad for visas would likely have been wary, given last year’s tragedy and the mounting discord between the kingdom and the Islamic Republic.

Un article du New York Post, référencé dans un article de dedefensa est assez édifiant, si ce qui est relaté est vrai.
Il y est question du rôle de Bandar « Bush » bin Sultan - alors ambassadeur saoudien aux USA - dans le 11 septembre.
On trouvera l’article d’@dedefensa ici, avec références à cet article et d’autres, ainsi que le commentaire : ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/481341

L’article en question :
How US covered up Saudi role in 9/11
New York Post / 17.04.16
▻http://nypost.com/2016/04/17/how-us-covered-up-saudi-role-in-911
Selon des enquêteurs toutes les pistes menaient à l’ambassade saoudienne aux USA, mais ils ont été dissuadé de poursuivre les investigations en ce sens :

Case agents I’ve interviewed at the Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Washington and San Diego, the forward operating base for some of the Saudi hijackers, as well as detectives at the Fairfax County (Va.) Police Department who also investigated several 9/11 leads, say virtually every road led back to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, as well as the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles.
Yet time and time again, they were called off from pursuing leads. A common excuse was “diplomatic immunity.”

Selon les mêmes sources, dans les 28 pages classifiées sont données des preuves obtenues par la CIA et le FBI d’une aide d’officiels saoudiens pour au moins deux des pirates de l’air installés à San Diego, et notamment de coups de fil avec l’ambassade saoudienne et d’un virement de 130 000$, à parti d’un compte au nom de la famille de Bandar, à une tierce partie qui auraient financé les deux pirates de l’air :

Those sources say the pages missing from the 9/11 congressional inquiry report — which comprise the entire final chapter dealing with “foreign support for the September 11 hijackers” — details “incontrovertible evidence” gathered from both CIA and FBI case files of official Saudi assistance for at least two of the Saudi hijackers who settled in San Diego.
Some information has leaked from the redacted section, including a flurry of pre-9/11 phone calls between one of the hijackers’ Saudi handlers in San Diego and the Saudi Embassy, and the transfer of some $130,000 from then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar’s family checking account to yet another of the hijackers’ Saudi handlers in San Diego.

Le 13 septembre 2001 réunion de Bandar avec G.W. Bush à la Maison blanche qui mène à l’évacuation de nombreux saoudiens du territoire des USA dont des membres de la famille ben Laden - qui ne seront donc pas interrogés :

After he met on Sept. 13, 2001, with President Bush in the White House, where the two old family friends shared cigars on the Truman Balcony, the FBI evacuated dozens of Saudi officials from multiple cities, including at least one Osama bin Laden family member on the terror watch list. Instead of interrogating the Saudis, FBI agents acted as security escorts for them, even though it was known at the time that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens.
“The FBI was thwarted from interviewing the Saudis we wanted to interview by the White House,” said former FBI agent Mark Rossini, who was involved in the investigation of al Qaeda and the hijackers. The White House “let them off the hook.”

Enfin, Anouar al-Aoulaki, citoyen américain et futur chef d’AQPA, a été brièvement détenu à l’aéroport JFK pour fraude au passeport en 2002 avant d’être relâché grâce aux Saoudiens (il sera tué plus tard dans une opération américaine par drone en 2011 au Yémen) :

Even Anwar al-Awlaki, the hijackers’ spiritual adviser, escaped our grasp. In 2002, the Saudi-sponsored cleric was detained at JFK on passport fraud charges only to be released into the custody of a “Saudi representative.”

A lire le long article de Reuters sur le mini-Etat al-Qaïdesque qui se bâtit dans le sud du Yémen dans le sillage de la guerre menée par l’Arabie saoudite contre les Houthis et les partisans de Saleh.
L’article détaille les ressources financières sur lesquelles AQPA - vous savez, ce groupe censé être responsable des attentats à Charlie... - a pu mettre la main et sa stratégie d’implantation locale pour gagner la bataille des cœurs et des esprits.

How Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen has made al Qaeda stronger – and richer

One unintended consequence of the war in Yemen: Al Qaeda now runs its own mini-state, flush with funds from raiding the local central bank and levying taxes at the local port.

Reuters 08.09.16
▻http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/yemen-aqap
Morceaux choisis mais tout est intéressant :

Once driven to near irrelevance by the rise of Islamic State abroad and security crackdowns at home, al Qaeda in Yemen now openly rules a mini-state with a war chest swollen by an estimated $100 million in looted bank deposits and revenue from running the country’s third largest port. [...]
The economic empire was described by more than a dozen diplomats, Yemeni security officials, tribal leaders and residents of Mukalla. Its emergence is the most striking unintended consequence of the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen. The campaign, backed by the United States, has helped Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to become stronger than at any time since it first emerged almost 20 years ago.
Yemeni government officials and local traders estimated the group, as well as seizing the bank deposits, has extorted $1.4 million from the national oil company and earns up to $2 million every day in taxes on goods and fuel coming into the port.
AQAP boasts 1,000 fighters in Mukalla alone, controls 600 km (373 miles) of coastline and is ingratiating itself with southern Yemenis, who have felt marginalised by the country’s northern elite for years.

Pour les amateurs d’humour, la déclaration de l’ambassade saoudienne :

In a recent statement issued by the Saudi embassy in Washington, Saudi officials said that their campaign had “denied terrorists a safe haven in Yemen.”

Comment AQAP a fait concrètement pour profiter de la guerre des Saoudiens :

Barely a week after Saudi Arabia launched “Operation Decisive Storm” against the Houthis in March last year, Yemeni army forces vanished from Mukalla’s streets and moved westward to combat zones, security officials and residents said.
The city’s residents were left defenceless, allowing a few dozen AQAP fighters to seize government buildings and free 150 of their comrades from the central jail. The freed included Khaled Batarfi, a senior al Qaeda leader. Pictures appeared online of Batarfi sitting inside the local presidential palace, looking happy and in control as he held a telephone to his ear.
Tribal leaders in neighbouring provinces told Reuters that, in the security vacuum, army bases were looted and Yemen’s south became awash with advanced weaponry. C4 explosive and even anti-aircraft missiles were available to the highest bidder.

Et, enfin, un constat rassurant :

And just as Islamic State seized the central bank in Mosul in northern Iraq, AQAP looted Mukalla’s central bank branch, netting an estimated $100 million, according to two senior Yemeni security officials.
“That represents their biggest financial gain to date,” one of the officials said. “That’s enough to fund them at the level they had been operating for at least another 10 years.”

Moussaoui Calls Saudi Princes Patrons of Al Qaeda - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/us/zacarias-moussaoui-calls-saudi-princes-patrons-of-al-qaeda.html?rref=world/middleeast

WASHINGTON — In highly unusual testimony inside the federal supermax prison, a former operative for Al Qaeda has described prominent members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family as major donors to the terrorist network in the late 1990s and claimed that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

The Qaeda member, Zacarias Moussaoui, wrote last year to Judge George B. Daniels of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who is presiding over a lawsuit filed against Saudi Arabia by relatives of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He said he wanted to testify in the case, and after lengthy negotiations with Justice Department officials and the federal Bureau of Prisons, a team of lawyers was permitted to enter the prison and question him for two days last October.

Moussaoui Calls Saudi Princes Patrons of #Al_Qaeda
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/us/zacarias-moussaoui-calls-saudi-princes-patrons-of-al-qaeda.html

WASHINGTON — In highly unusual testimony inside the federal supermax prison, a former operative for Al Qaeda has described prominent members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family as major donors to the terrorist network in the late 1990s and claimed that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

The Qaeda member, Zacarias Moussaoui, wrote last year to Judge George B. Daniels of United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who is presiding over a lawsuit filed against Saudi Arabia by relatives of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He said he wanted to testify in the case, and after lengthy negotiations with Justice Department officials and the federal Bureau of Prisons, a team of lawyers was permitted to enter the prison and question him for two days last October.

#Saoud #Arabie_Saoudite