All the atrocities Saudi Arabia committed before outrage over Jamal

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The disappearance and death of journalist and Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi has thrust Saudi Arabia back into a global spotlight that centers directly on the Kingdom’s troubled human-rights record.

And because Khashoggi once enjoyed a level of proximity to the Saudi royal court, he was particularly outspoken about the Saudi leadership’s worst impulses and its aversion to dissent.

Khashoggi was last seen alive on surveillance video captured October 2 outside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. He had arrived to retrieve documentation for a planned wedding to his Turkish fiancée Hatice Cengiz. Despite implications that suggest Khashoggi was targeted and killed by his own government, the Saudis have asserted that he died in a physical struggle with Saudi agents, not long after he entered the consulate.

During the early morning hours of October 20 local time in Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom announced its official admission that Khashoggi is dead. The matter did fresh damage to Saudi Arabia’s credibility, in part because the Kingdom had floated conflicting explanations about Khashoggi’s fate for nearly three weeks.

The incident has sparked a global outcry. Some US lawmakers have called for sanctions against Saudi Arabia, while government leaders, companies and private investors have pulled away from the Kingdom until more is known about the circumstances of Khashoggi’s death.

But Saudi Arabia has faced criticism for human-rights abuses in the past.

The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen has led to the deaths of thousands of civilians. The Kingdom has been implicated as a sponsor of terrorist organizations, it has been accused of playing a role in some of the worst terror attacks in history, and its practice of jailing and publicly punishing activists has brought it to the brink of diplomatic crisis.

Here are all the atrocities Saudi Arabia committed long before the outrage over Jamal Khashoggi’s death began.

Funding global terrorism

Associated Press

Perhaps most notably, the Saudi government is believed to be linked to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers aboard commercial flights that either crashed or flew into the World Trade Center towers in New York were Saudi citizens, and the plot was orchestrated by al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden, who was the son of a prominent Saudi millionaire construction magnate with close ties to the Saudi royal family.

In 2016, a report on the attacks by the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities found that some of the hijackers received assistance and financial support from individuals connected to the Saudi government, including members of the royal family.

Leaked diplomatic cables reveal deep connections between Saudi Arabia and global terror groups.

In 2010, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Saudi Arabia remained “a critical financial support base” for some Islamist terror organizations, including Al-Qaida and the Taliban.

“Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide,” Clinton said.

In this respect, funding for terror groups happens indirectly, partly funneled via donors who set up front companies to receive money from government-sanctioned charities.

According to another leaked cable, the US intelligence community suggested that one of the largest Islamic terror groups in Asia, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LT), may have leaned on a person connected to an alias of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba called Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JUD).

According to the US State Department cable, the JUD official “forwarded JUD donation receipts to a probable LT front company in Saudi Arabia.” An LT official there is believed to have “acted as a front for moving LT funds,” the cable said, citing intelligence reporting.

Lashkar-e-Tayyiba was behind the 2008 terror attack in Mumbai, India, a series of 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai that killed 172 people and injured many more.

According to one of the cables, Clinton credited the Saudi capital of Riyadh for its “increasingly aggressive efforts to disrupt al-Qa’ida’s access to funding from Saudi sources,” but said the country had “taken only limited action to disrupt fundraising” for the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.

Restricting freedom of speech and independent media

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Saudi Arabia has consistently ranked low on press freedom indexes, and currently ranks 169th out of 180 countries in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index.

Saudi Arabia does not allow any independent media, and it attempts to censor its citizens online and offline.

Journalists there are subjected to scrutiny, and language deemed critical of the government can lead to detention under the country’s counterterrorism laws. Journalists also face the threat of public punishment and even death.

In 2012, Saudi blogger Raif Badawi was charged with “violating Islamic values and propagating liberal thought,” and sentenced to 10 years in prison, 1,000 lashes, and fined 1 million Riyals, which amounts to about $ 266,000, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom said.

In August, Saudi Arabia contemplated a death sentence for activist Israa al-Ghomgham, who documented political demonstrations in the country’s Eastern Province.

She could face execution by sword, and her final hearing is set for October 28.

And the Saudi activist Omar Abdulaziz, a 27-year-old Canadian political refugee who hosts a satirical news show, told Business Insider in August that Saudi authorities arrested members of his family back home to pressure him into ending his program, which is often critical of the Saudi royal family.

Saudi agents even bugged his phone and tracked his movements in an effort to intimidate him.

Jailing human-rights activists

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Saudi Arabia has been known to detain human-rights activists, sometimes without formally charging them with a crime. Some of these detentions are kept secret.

Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia arrested scores of activists — most of whom had campaigned ahead of an official rule change that allowed women to drive.

Some of the activists said the arrests were an attempt by Saudi leadership to stifle dissent and silence anyone who may seek to take credit for the Kingdom’s decision to lift the ban.

The award-winning women’s rights campaigner Samar Badawi was among those who were arrested. She is best-known for challenging the country’s restrictive male guardianship laws, which prevent women from traveling, studying, or making important life choices without a man’s permission.

Badawi is the sister of jailed activist Raif Badawi. She had previously been detained for her advocacy and was banned from traveling. Her arrest prompted a concerned tweet from Canada’s foreign ministry, which asked Saudi Arabia to “immediately release” her and the other activists.

That move led to swift diplomatic retaliation from Saudi Arabia.

The Kingdom expelled Canada’s ambassador. It froze new trade, suspended flights, recalled thousands of students, barred its citizens from receiving medical care in Canada, and began dumping Canada’s assets.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider