position:king

  • The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب : BHL in Saudi media
    http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2012/07/bhl-in-saudi-media.html?spref=tw

    BHL in Saudi media
    Do you know that Al-Arabiyya (the politically sleazy news station of King Fahd’s brother-in-law) now treats BHL as an expert on the Arab world?

    PS Oh, and he is identified as “the philosopher”.
    PPS He said that he is not a Zionist but that he is a supporter of Israel.
    Posted by As’ad AbuKhalil

    SVP, nommez-le « Prince-philosophe » et gardez-le.

  • Tatoueur en Arabie séoudite : 200 coups de fouet et un an de prison.
    http://news.yahoo.com/saudi-court-condemns-tattoo-king-jail-lashes-130930971.html

    A Lebanese man nicknamed the “tattoo king” has been sentenced to one year in prison and 200 lashes in the conservative Muslim kingdom, a Saudi newspaper reported on Tuesday.

    “Investigations revealed the Lebanese had been practicing this job for nine years,” said Al-Madina.

    “At first, he used to receive women in a rented apartment (in the western city of Jeddah) but later he began going to women’s homes to draw tattoos on their bodies” to avoid being caught by Saudi religious police, said the daily.

  • Ah, une nouvelle incarnation de Captain Israël :
    http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-06-20/news/gay-inc-free-speech-rights

    But when gay-porn king Michael Lucas got wind of the group’s plans, he vowed to keep them (or anyone else) from criticizing Israel within the Center’s walls. Lucas is primarily known for his puffy lips, his nine-inch custom dildo in the shape of his manhood, and his shameless self-promotion. Increasingly, he’s also known for his Zionism and open hatred of Muslims. And so, Lucas went about getting the Center to eject Siege Busters.

    #pinkwashing (mais pas seulement)

  • Bonnie King Avers Controversial Gambling Attorney Howard Dickstein and Mouthpiece Doug Elmets Engage in “Heinous Action” and “Tribal Terrorism” Against Native Americans
    –-----------------------------------------------

    In a desperate plea for help, activist Bonnie King is asking members of Congress to bring an end to “tribal terrorism” Howard Dickstein and Doug Elmets inflict on members of various Indian tribes located in California.

    According to King, unscrupulous tribal leaders engage in a scheme to “kick out enrolled members without just cause to increase their own wealth and power.”

    King further alleges that the scheme is supported by Howard Dickstein and political consultant Doug Elmets who “are encouraging tribal committees to execute this heinous action. While they drive their nice sports cars, live in huge mansions, and fly in private jets the executive committees are sending disenrolled members into bankruptcy and a loss of sacred heritage. They use false excuses for reasoning, but the disenrollments have only taken place post Indian Gaming. Federal and state governments will not intervene, calling it intertribal issues, so the disenrolled members have no say or recourse”, King stated.

    “Something desparately needs to be done about this corruption,” King concluded.

    See complete story @:

    http://www.change.org/petitions/all-united-states-senators-and-congressmen-am

    Dickstein, a widely-known but controversial figure within California’s Tribal Gambling industry, has been named recently as defendant in a suit seeking unspecified monetary damages. Also named as defendant is Dickstein’s wife, Sacramento-based lobbyist Jeannine English.

    The lawsuit alleges that Dickstein and English executed a scheme that caused injury to the Plaintiff, a Southern California resident who claims his privacy and constitutional rights were “egregiously violated.”

    Specifically, the suit alleges that in order to camouflage a scheme and make it appear as though it is purely a mundane action by a governmental agency and was not designed to conceal Dickstein’s and English’s own acts of malfeasance, greed, and betrayal, defendants resorted to abusing their considerable “political and legal clout.”

    This clout was presumably obtained as a result of the funneling of hundreds of millions of dollars from myriad Tribal Casinos to various state and local governmental agencies/officials, as well as from English’s position as a member of the State Bar of California Board of Governors, and the fact that the president of the State Bar of California, Jon Streeter, and his firm of Keker & Van Nest, represent Howard Dickstein. This , the plaintiff alleges, shows “malice and oppression” on the part of defendants sufficient to justify an award of punitive damages.

    Dickstein , who is no stranger to litigation, has been previously named a defendant in a suit advanced by his client, members of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nations (formerly known as the Ramsey Band of Wintun Indians), which owns and operates the Cache Creek Casino in Brooks, California, an unincorporated community in Yolo County.

    In that action, the plaintiffs — who were represented by Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy and legal ethics expert Michael Boli — alleged that Dickstein engaged in myriad fraudulent conduct, concealment, conversion (i.e. a non-criminal term referring to the act of theft), breaches of fiduciary duties, misrepresentations, and unjustly enriching himself with tribal money by defrauding the tribe of millions of dollars over more than a decade.

    While the suit was pending, further allegations of grave misconduct were leveled against Dickstein and his attorneys of San Francisco-based Keker & Van Nest including claims that evidence was “manufactured.” Later, Dickstein and his lawyers of Keker & Van Nest (presumably, John Keker, Elliot Peters, and Jon Streeter) falsely advertised and misled the public into believing that the Yocha Dehe tribe had only sued Dickstein for conduct which was “negligent” in nature. Dickstein and his legal team neglected to reference the allegations of defrauding the tribe of millions of dollars over more than a decade through fraudulent conduct, concealment, conversion, breaches of fiduciary duties, and misrepresentations which the tribe had leveled against their own attorney.

    In nearby Placer County, situated between the cities of Roseville and Lincoln, 50 miles east of Yolo County, where the United Auburn Indian Community operates the Thunder Valley Casino, allegations of greed and betrayal were also leveled against Howard Dickstein by the former chairwoman of the United Auburn Indian Community, the Honorable Jessica Tavares and long-time tribal council member Dolly Suehead.

    According to media reports, Tribal Administrator Greg Baker — a Dickstein confederate — disallowed a tribe-funded mailing of a campaign mailer that claims the United Auburn Indian Community has been “bamboozled by an attorney [Howard Dickstein] more interested in filling his garage with Ferraris than serving the interest of our tribe, and the greed of a tribal council that rubber stamps his decision and no longer looks after our best interests.”

    Baker, who as it turned out was involved in a separate and unrelated financial scheme, was recently suspended following on the heels of an IRS investigation into allegations of fraud and money-laundering. In affidavits filed by an IRS investigator, it was alleged that Baker was part of a scheme to over-bill the casino/tribe by more than $18 million, which would later be “kicked-back.”

    Roman Porter — a long time ally and confederate of California Democratic Party operative Joseph Dunn of embattled online publication Voice of OC who now serves as the executive director of the State Bar of California — was recently hired as Thunder Valley Casino’s new tribal administrator.

  • Egyptian lawyer sentenced to 20 lashes in Saudi Arabia for “defaming the king”
    http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/40001/Egypt/Politics-/Egyptian-lawyer-sentenced-to--lashes-in-Saudi-Arab.aspx

    Egyptian lawyer, Ahmed El-Gizawy has been sentenced in absentia to one year in jail and 20 lashes, Monday, for “defaming” KIng Abdullah of Saudi Arabia during his visit to the gulf country to undertake the Islamic ritual “Umrah.”

    El-Gizawy is to receive the 20 lashes on Friday.

    The Egyptian lawyer was traveling with his family to Jeddah where he was detained on Tuesday, 17 April. El-Gizawy had filled legal cases calling for the release of Egyptians who are currently being held in Saudi Arabia’s prisons without court sentences.

  • Spain King Juan Carlos sorry for Botswana hunt trip
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17752983

    King Juan Carlos has apologised to the Spanish people for going on a hunting trip in Africa while his country was in the midst of an economic crisis.
    His trip to Botswana, which was widely criticised, emerged after he was flown home for treatment for a fractured hip.
    “I’m very sorry, I made a mistake. It won’t happen again,” he said, as he left San Jose hospital in Madrid.

    The king, 74, is honorary president of the Spanish branch of conservation group WWF and an online petition calling for his resignation had accumulated almost 85,000 signatures by the time he made his public apology.

    #Espagne #crise

  • Saudis Seek to Funnel Arms to Syria Rebels
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304177104577311572820862442.html

    Saudi Arabia has pressed Jordan to open its border with Syria to allow weapons to reach rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, officials from both countries say, a move that could buoy Syria’s opposition and harden the conflict in the country and across the region.

    In a March 12 meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah asked his Jordanian counterpart to permit weapons shipments into Syria in exchange for economic assistance to Jordan, these officials say. Jordan hasn’t yet agreed, they said.

    The U.S. has opposed furnishing arms to the rebels, fearing that weapons could end up in the hands of al Qaeda or other extremist groups. But late Thursday, a top U.S. defense official suggested such a policy could potentially shift. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Syrian opposition appeared to be taking steps to unite as a group, a development he said could help clear the way for international aid including arms.

  • Al Jazeera et le Maroc :
    http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2012/02/aljazeera-and-morocco.html

    Yassine sent met this: “So al-Jazeera decided not to air the documentary on Morocco and the 20th of February Movement (nuqta sakhina), which they had been promoting for more than a week. Why not? Again? (In November the same thing happened (back then the al-Jazeera crew was forbidden to go to Tanger and the al-Hoceima area: two centers of the Moroccan uprising). The Moroccan king recently ’gave’ the Qatari emir some 45.000 hectares (=450 km²) in the Guelmim area so that the Qatari emir could go hunt there. And also, these two weeks al-Jazeera has been negotiating a possible return to Morocco with the new minister of information. So I guess the negotiations are concluded. Perhaps the documentary was just a card in the negotiation-process. This is Gulf-media”.

    #censure

  • High-Tech Trickery in Homs?
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/sandbox/high-tech-trickery-homs

    King’s presentation of “shelling, fires and damage” to Homs shows destruction of property consistent with the use of heavy weapons: “It’s like a ghost town – with no cars at all, there’s damage in the roads and so much damage on the top of the buildings.”

    Zooming in on three different sections of the same Homs neighborhood to show before-and-after images of the destruction, King says: “Now obviously, we’re not there, but this powerful satellite imagery tends to support the accounts from activists that there’s a lot of shelling and fighting going on in the city, and a lot of fires.”

    There is only one problem with his account. Most of the alleged fighting, shelling, destruction and killing reported widely in the international media took place in the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs, southwest of the city, and an anti-regime stronghold.

    But all three satellite images shown by King are in al-Zahra neighborhood, a pro-regime area consisting mainly of Alawis, who belong to the same Muslim minority sect as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

  • Google Doodle Celebrates Martin Luther King Day
    http://mashable.com/2012/01/16/google-doodle-celebrates-martin-luther-king-day

    The illustrated logo depicts Dr. King surrounded by young faces. It includes a line from the famous “I Have a Dream” speech he gave from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to 250,000 civil rights marchers on August 28, 1963: “I have a dream that my four little children will not be judged by their color of their skin … I have a dream today.”

  • Coca-Cola accused of propping up notorious Swaziland dictator | World news | The Guardian

    Coca-Cola has been accused of propping up one of Africa’s most notorious dictators.

    The multibillion dollar beverage company owns a concentrate-manufacturing plant in Swaziland, an impoverished kingdom ruled by Africa’s last absolute monarch, Mswati III.

    The king has travelled to Coca-Cola’s headquarters in Atlanta in the US, much to the disgust of Swazi political activists who blame him for human rights abuses and looting the nation’s wealth.

    Mary Pais Da Silva, co-ordinator of the Swaziland Democracy Campaign, called for Coca-Cola to pull out of the country immediately.

    “Coca-Cola must know they’re doing business with the wrong people,” she said. “At the end of the day it doesn’t benefit the economy in any way. Their profits don’t help the average Swazi, while the king is getting richer by the day.” She added: “The king is milking the country. This is entrenching him more and more, giving him economic strength to crush opposition. Nobody should do business with the regime in Swaziland. They should cut ties and take their business elsewhere.”

    Mswati III has 13 wives and hosts an annual dance where he can choose a new bride from tens of thousands of bare-breasted virgins.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/02/coca-cola-accused-swaziland-dictator

  • As U.S. departs Iraq, it leaves behind allies who won’t talk – Roy Gutman
    http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/12/18/133219/as-us-departs-iraq-it-leaves-behind.html

    More than five years have passed since Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah last received Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al Maliki. The Saudi monarch views Maliki as untrustworthy and, even worse, “an Iranian agent.”

    Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow direct flights between its capital, Riyadh, and Baghdad, and it doesn’t permit direct trade between the two countries. The kingdom is building a fence along the closed 500-mile border.

    This, too, is a legacy of the U.S. invasion of Iraq as U.S. troops complete their withdrawal: a bitter enmity between two close U.S. allies, with an underlay of sectarian animosity, that the United States cannot seem to ameliorate.

  • The King’s Real Estate : For The Sake Of Transparency at The Black Iris of Jordan
    http://www.black-iris.com/2011/12/08/the-kings-real-estate-for-the-sake-of-transparency

    Malversations foncières en #Jordanie : enrichissement du Roi ou dysfonctionnement administratif conduisant au contournement de l’Etat. Fausse transparence, bureaucratie et mal #développement.

    there is usually a process whereby public lands are developed for the public benefit or used for investments, but because that process is either broken, slow, bureaucratic or what have you, the country’s treasury thought that things could get done quicker if they just registered the land in the King’s name. That’s essentially what this offered reason boils down to. The lands that belong to the public were registered in the King’s name in order to get things done; in order to bypass process. In order to cut through red tape and procedures. This is the reason they’re choosing to go with. That to me is far more important and interesting than whether one believes their offered reason or not. The fact that they offered it is a bold and public declaration of how the state thinks about transparency.

  • La démocratie selon l’Arabie séoudite : Saudi reformists jailed (via @alaingresh)
    http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1074/re3.htm

    “Horrible, uncalled for and unfounded” were the words used by Bassim Alim, the lawyer of the 16 reformists sentenced on 22 November to stiff jail sentences in Riyadh that ranged from 10 to 30 years in prison, after being found guilty of forming a secret organisation, attempting to seize power, inciting discontent against the king, financing terrorism and money laundering.

    Saud Al-Mokhtar, a medical doctor from Jeddah, received the stiffest sentence of 30 years in jail, together with a 30-year travel ban and fine of SR2 million (around $533,112) for allegedly being the head of the group.

    “He was the most visible of them in the media, but there was never a group. It was a complete fabrication,” Alim said in a phone interview with Al-Ahram Weekly from Jeddah.

  • Letters : The King James Bible and eternal copyright | Books | The Guardian
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/27/king-james-bible-eternal-copyright

    Michael Gove and the government are making a gift of the King James Bible to every school in the UK (Report, 25 November) but continue to restrict how we use it. The crown has a perpetual #copyright on the King James Bible, through “letters patent” originally issued to stop unofficial editions and then to protect the country from ranters, shakers, Quakers, nonconformity and popery.

    #religion

  • Contrairement à l’idée promue par la publicité politique, le vote et la démocratie ne sont pas des concepts interchangeables. Ici, des démocrates sont persécutés pour avoir revendiqué le droit de ne pas voter :
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/africa-mideast/amid-the-trappings-of-democracy-moroccans-prepare-to-vote/article2248541

    Like people elsewhere in the Arab world, Moroccans hit the streets in the first half of 2011 calling for more democracy, and King Mohammed VI responded by amending the constitution and bringing forward the election.

    But since then the sense of change has dissipated.

    The real challenge for these polls, in which an opposition Islamist party and a pro-palace coalition are expected to do well, will be getting people to vote in the face of a strident boycott campaign by democracy campaigners.

    U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said that since Oct. 20 the government has taken more than 100 activists in for questioning for advocating a boycott.

  • Content is not king, Andrew Odlyzko, 3 janvier 2001 :
    http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/history.communications2.pdf

    Unfortunately for these companies, content is not the key. Content certainly has all the glamor. What content does not have is money. This might seem absurd. After all, the media trumpet the hundred million dollar opening weekends of blockbuster movies, and leading actors such as Julia Roberts or Jim Carrey earn $20 million (plus a share of the gross) per film. That is true, and it is definitely possible to become rich and famous in Hollywood. Yet the revenues and profits from movies pale next to those for providing the much denigrated “pipes.” The annual movie theater ticket sales in the U.S. are well under $10 billion. The telephone industry collects that much money every two weeks! Those “commodity pipelines” attract much more spending than the glamorous “content.”

    In the following sections I develop the argument that connectivity is more important than content. The evidence is based on current and historical spending figures. I also show that the current preoccu- pation by decision makers is not new, as similar attitudes have been common in the past. I then make projections for the future role of content and connectivity, and discuss implications for the architecture of the Internet, including wireless technologies.

  • United States v. Marijuana: Dispatches from the Field: Prisoners — America’s New Cash Crop
    http://unitedstatesvmarijuana.blogspot.com/2011/10/dispatches-from-field-prisoners.html

    At the 2011 dedication ceremony for the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial, many speakers, including President Obama, quoted from King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, in which King eloquently spoke out for freedom and justice. Yet almost fifty years later King’s son, Martin Luther King III, says his father’s dream has not been realized, that America has “lost its soul,” in part by “having more people of color in prison than in college.” He is not wrong. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, in the last decade nearly one in three African-American men aged 20-29 was under criminal-justice supervision, while more than two out of five had been incarcerated.

    [...]

    The FBI puts the number of marijuana arrests over the last decade alone at 7.9 million.

    [...]

    Writing for thenation.com, labor journalist Mike Elk and blogger Bob Sloan detail ALEC’s “instrumental role in the explosion of the US prison population in the past few decades,” explaining how ALEC pioneered some of the toughest sentencing laws on the books today – mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug offenders, Three Strikes laws, and so-called truth-in-sentencing laws, which require violent offenders to serve 85% of their sentences before being considered for release. After ensuring that more prisoners would be incarcerated for longer and longer periods, ALEC then “paved the way for states and corporations to replace unionized workers with prison labor.”

    [..]

    Prison labor for private profit was illegal before ALEC came along. Now the lobbyists have instituted two federal programs to regulate and certify prison labor. Just goes to show what money can buy.

    In Florida, an outfit calling itself PRIDE (Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises) now runs forty work programs where inmates manufacture “tons of processed beef, chicken and pork,” as well as office furniture and other commercial items – for twenty cents an hour.

  • Syria needs mediation, not a push into all-out civil war | Jonathan Steele (Comment is free)
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/17/syria-mediation-arab-league-assad

    Syria is on the verge of civil war and the Arab League foolishly appears to have decided to egg it on. The spectre is ugly, as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the hawks of the Gulf, are joined by the normally restrained King Abdullah of Jordan in taking sides with opponents of Syria’s Assad regime. Where common sense dictates that Arab governments should seek to mediate between the regime and its opponents, they have chosen instead to humiliate Syria’s rulers by suspending them from the Arab League. (...) Source: Comment is free

  • The Google TMG effect … ou quand les ayants-droit censurent bêtement des sites d’information | bluetouff
    http://reflets.info/the-google-tmg-effect-ou-quand-les-ayants-droit-censurent-betement-des-sit

    Et voilà, ça commence... comme prévu. On pourra coller ça directement comme une conséquence directe de lois techniquement non maîtrisées pour le seul profit d’une poignée de crétins, qui comme prévu, opèrent une censure aveugle, idiote, bête et méchante... une censure sur mots clés, avec tout le surblocage que cela implique. Elles se nomment iPred, ACTA, HADOPI.... C’est un lecteur qui nous remonte cette information franchement pas amusante. Peut être avez vous vu passer le petit coup de gueule d’une personne de Google mettant en garde sur les dérives de certains pays vers une lente mais sûre censure du Net ? SI ce n’est pas le cas, lises bien attentivement ceci. C’est fait ? Vous voulez encore vous faire mal ? Et bien lisez ces chiffres. L’initiative Chillingeffect, permet à Google de publier un petit encart en bas de page menant sur le site de l’initiative et qui recense la liste des URLs qui ont été censurées. Cette initiative, outre la transparence, a aussi le bon goût de vous o

  • Statement by the President on the Selection of Prince Nayif bin Abd al-Aziz as Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia | The White House
    http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/10/28/statement-president-selection-prince-nayif-bin-abd-al-aziz-crown-prince-

    I congratulate King Abdullah and the Saudi people on the selection of Prince Nayif bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud as Crown Prince and Deputy Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

    Oui, félicitations au «peuple séoudien», hein, des fois qu’il ait eu le choix.

  • Tomgram: Barbara Ehrenreich, Homeless in America (TomDispatch)
    http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175457/tomgram:_barbara_ehrenreich,_homeless_in_america

    Last weekend, at the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial on the Washington Mall, two of King’s children gave shout-outs to Occupy Wall Street, now spreading around the country and the world. His daughter Bernice spoke of it as “a freedom explosion” and his son Martin eloquently hailed “the young people of the Occupy movement all over this country and throughout the world [who] are seeking justice... for working class people barely making it, justice for middle class folk unable to pay their mortgages... justice for the young people who graduate from college and are unemployed and burdened by student loans they cannot repay, justice for everyone who is simply asking the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair share.” Source: TomDispatch

  • Prince Nayef, likely to become heir to Saudi king | Reuters
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/22/us-saudi-nayef-idUSTRE79L0M520111022

    Nayef’s three decades as interior minister have allowed him to extend his authority across government into foreign policy, religious affairs and the media.

    He oversees arrangements for the annual Haj pilgrimage to Mecca, when 2 million Muslims gather in the birthplace of Islam, and heads security cooperation with Yemen and other countries trying to stem the flow of infiltrators, drugs smugglers and arms traffickers across Saudi borders.

    Conservative even by Saudi Arabia’s austere standards, Nayef is sometimes portrayed as putting the brakes on the king’s cautious political reforms.

    Earlier this year he publicly admonished a member of the mainly consultative Shura Council who had called for a review of the ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia.

    It was also Nayef who ended months of speculation in the run-up to partial elections in February 2005 as to whether women would be allowed to vote or stand for office. Nayef said it was too soon for women to take part — and the debate was over.

    Ce qui n’empêche pas Reuters de trouver des « analystes » (qui ? qui ?) pour prétendre que, malgré ce profil ultra-réactionnaire et une réputation de maître tortionnaire, dès qu’il se sera au pouvoir, Nayef sera un « modéré ».

    Analysts say Nayef may take a more moderate line if he becomes king, and note that the present monarch was portrayed as a staunch conservative when he became crown prince in 1995, but proved to be a sometimes ambitious reformer as king.

    Comme qui dirait, un quasi-démocrate...

    Pour rappel, même le relais des séoudiens au Liban, Saad Hariri, avait qualifié le prince Nayef d’« assassin » en le comparant à Bashar Assad. La diffusion de cet enregistrement avait fait grand bruit en janvier dernier.

  • Le prince héritier séoudien 83 ans, ministre de la défense depuis 48 ans, est mort. Je ne serais qu’à moitié surpris si son frère, le roi Abdallah, avait l’idée saugrenue, lui aussi, de décéder prochainement.

    Heir to Saudi throne Crown Prince Sultan dies - Al Jazeera English
    http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2011/10/2011102235021833.html

    Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, the 83-year-old defence minister and first in line of succession to become king of Saudi Arabia, has died.

    “With deep sorrow and sadness ... King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz mourns the death of his brother and his Crown Prince Sultan who died at dawn this morning Saturday outside the kingdom following an illness,” the Saudi state press agency said.

    Prince Sultan’s funeral will be held on Tuesday, the statement said.

    He was an “important and influential senior prince” who played a key role in relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council, particularly Yemen, said Hussein Shobokshi, a columnist for the Asharq Alawsat newspaper.