Getting Away With Murder

The Saudi regimes practice of essentially ignoring the nature of their citizens crimes abroad ..... 

Saudi Officials Used This SUV To
Help Saudi Man Escape US Justice

..... and also the laws in the nation in which these crimes take place, is a practice that should be punished more harshly. I have posted on this subject before but it continues according to the US Department of Justice and FBI.

They still routinely pay the bail of Saudi citizens (99 per cent men), who are usually charged with sex offences (assault, or rape), murder, manslaughter (usually car related), human trafficking (so called house keepers/maids who are actually foreign bonded slaves), or in child custody cases with non Saudi citizens. Very often these men, somehow then manage to leave the country (despite having had their passports seized), turning up in Saudi Arabia where they can neither be tried nor extradited.

This practise of helping it citizens, evading non Saudi justice, is apparently ignored because of Saudi oil (god help them when that runs out, or we don't need it anymore), just like President Biden is now fist bumping with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (the effective Saudi Ruler), despite previously ignoring his telephone calls, having called him a "pariah" on the election trail. 

Biden Fist Pumping A "Pariah"

He had even said just 4 weeks before the visit, that he wouldn't meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on his visit .... such is the power of Saudi oil, and tolerance for their rogue state ways that not only are they meeting, but fist bumping.

Recently, the Biden administration had demanded that the kingdom stop helping accused criminals flee, as Senior State Department officials have “made clear that such individuals must face proceedings in the United States and that any Saudi government interference with the integrity of the U.S. criminal justice system is unacceptable,” but whether that will also be forgotten now, is not clear. Senator Ron Wyden (Democrat -Oregon) has been campaigning to get the US government to stop this foreign state undermining of the US justice system.

He has said that it is “flagrantly unacceptable for Saudi officials to help someone accused of assault or murder flee the country and evade justice.” adding in another interview that “If any employee of the Saudi Embassy helps Saudis evade or undermine the U.S. justice system, they ought to be immediately expelled and permanently banned from the country at a bare minimum.”

In October 2018, Abdullah Hariri and Sultan Alsuhaymi, both citizens of Saudi Arabia, stabbed Raekwon Moore during a street fight in the Uptown district of Greenville, North Carolina, who died in hospital. The two men were not initially charged with any offence, but were later charged with first-degree murder, but in fact had already fled the USA. According  to the police department the Greenville police didn’t even ask Hariri or Alsuhaymi to stay in the country, as they carried out no flight risk assessment. Investigations confirmed that Alsuhaymi flew out of Dulles International Airport on the 17th Oct 2018, four days after he had allegedly stabbed and killed Moore and its assumed Hariri flew out at about the same time.

These are just two of the more serious charges outstanding against the dozens of Saudi citizens (often in the USA as students); their alleged offences range from first-degree murder/manslaughter, vehicular hit-and-run, rape and possession of child pornography. The Oregonlive website (Adblock not allowed), has detailed some of these many Saudi's who have escaped US justice on an inter-active national map.

In 2015, Waleed Ali Alharthi, a student at Oregon State University was charged with 10 counts of encouraging child sexual abuse, after he was found to have a cache of child pornography on his computer. The court confiscated his passport, but Alharthi escaped to Mexico City having somehow obtained a new passport, then flew to Paris from there on his way back to Saudi Arabia.

Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah
Was Arraigned In Portland 2016.

In 2016, Fallon Smart, a 15-year-old Portland girl was struck and killed by the speeding car of a Saudi college student Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah, who was freed from a Portland jail when the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles handed him $100,000 to cover his down payment on his $1 million bail (what's the point of setting bail if they only pay 10 per cent?). He had surrendered his passport and driver’s license to Homeland Security officials and had been fitted with an ankle bracelet, but that was no problem as the Saudi Embassy was on the case. 

In June 2017, two weeks before his trial for manslaughter, a black SUV pulled up, he popped in, and a week later, he was back in Saudi Arabia ... the ankle bracelet was later found by the roadside. As there is no US extradition treaty with Saudi Arabia, there is no chance that he could be made to face justice in the United States, unless he leaves the Kingdom.

Court records show. that after Ali Alhamoud, an 18 year old Saudi student, was jailed on charges of raping a young woman in a small town near the Oregon coast, Saudi officials put up $65,000 to cover the $650,000 bond, and within hours of being bailed out, Alhamoud boarded a plane and flew home without hindrance, after help from the Saudi officials.

Oregon’s other U.S. Senator, Democrat Jeff Merkley said in 2019 during a hearing on a candidates confirmation to become the administration’s ambassador to Riyadh, “Are you as disturbed as I am that Saudi nationals have a get-out-of-jail-free card that allows them to commit abuses against children, manslaughter, rape and have no accountability? ... When a person commits a crime in the United States, we shouldn’t — because they’re an ally that buys a lot of stuff from us — allow them to whisk their citizens out.”

The majority of the accused fled the USA with the active assistance of the Saudi authorities, such as Hussam Aleidi, a student at Radford University in Virginia, was convicted on charges including assault in 2018. He fled his probation and returned to Saudi Arabia with the Saudi embassy’s help.

To give this some perspective, in 2018, the Saudi government reported that about 60,000 of its citizens were currently studying in the United States, a figure that may have dropped during Covid restrictions but is expected to return to up to 80,000 in the next few years. The vast majority are law abiding.

Frank Montoya Jr, a former FBI official who once headed the agency’s counter intelligence effort, said. “Right now, the Saudis think they have carte blanche in our country. Given the support that they are getting now, they literally can get away with murder.”