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The issue of drinking alcohol in Saudi Arabia has come sharply into focus once again after a British man was caught with homemade wine. Karl Andree, 74, was arrested by Saudi religious police and has spent more than a year in prison - it had been reported that he was also facing 360 lashes but it has since emerged that he was going to be spared flogging because of his age and ill-health. Alcohol is prohibited in Saudi Arabia and the Foreign Office warns Britons not to flout these rules - but how easy is it to get your hands...

Being a fighter pilot, in general, sounds like a sweet gig on the surface. You fly in fast jets, and you get to wear sunglasses a lot. But to the 100 Saudi fighter pilots bombing Houthi rebels in Yemen right now, it just got better. Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal promised each and every one of them a Bentley. Oddly enough, bin Talal deleted the tweet shortly after, but I think the offer still stands. In case your Arabic is a little rusty, the original reads: I congratulate your success of Operation Decisive Storm and the start of Operation Restore...

(Note: This was written a month ago) With 91-year-old Abdullah’s hospitalization with pneumonia Jan. 2, all eyes in Saudi Arabia immediately turned to Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, the defense minister and the king’s 79-year-old half-brother. Yet due to Salman’s own deteriorating health – those close to the palace say the crown prince is suffering from the early stages of dementia – a campaign is growing within Riyadh to bypass Salman and give the throne to Deputy Crown Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz, 69, another of the king’s half brothers, should Abdullah be deemed unfit to rule. Both the crown prince...

Saudi Arabia has reportedly begun to allow Jews to work in the kingdom, according to a local newspaper. On Tuesday, the Saudi daily Al-Watan reported that Saudi authorities are now allowing people of all faiths, including Jews, to work in the kingdom, saying this was proof of the country's openness to other religions and cultures. The report was translated from Arabic by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). The Saudi religious establishment is divided over the issue of foreign workers in the country, noted MEMRI, due to differing interpretations of a hadith of the Prophet Mohammed that states, "Remove...

Peter Robinson, a Reagan speechwriter in the last years of the Cold War, posed an interesting question the other day. He noted that on Feb. 22, 1946, a mere six months after the end of World War II, George Kennan, a U.S. diplomat in Moscow, sent his famous 5,000-word telegram that laid out the stakes of the Cold War and the nature of the enemy, and that that "Long Telegram" in essence shaped the way America thought about the conflict all the way up to the fall of the Berlin Wall four decades later. And what Mr. Robinson wondered was...

Confidential reports ...detail for the first time how Al Rajhi Bank has maintained accounts and accepted donations for Saudi charities In addition, Mr. Al Rajhi and family members have been major donors to Islamic charities that are suspected by Western intelligence agencies of funding terrorism.....a year after Sept. 11, Mr. Al Rajhi ordered Al Rajhi Bank's board "to explore financial instruments that would allow the bank's charitable contributions to avoid official Saudi scrutiny." .... Mr. Al Rajhi "transferred $1.1 billion to offshore accounts -- "Al Rajhi Bank: Conduit for Extremist Finance." Today, Mr. Al Rajhi is a reclusive octogenarian whose...

The National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia The National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia (NSCSA)  was established in 1979 to meet the transportation needs of Importers and Exporters in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East. By 1983, NSCSA has established itself as a combination Roll-on/Roll-off (Ro-Ro), Container and Breakbulk carrier, operating 8 fully owned vessels.  It had become one of the world's largest Ro-Ro operators, offering liner services linking the Middle East with North America, the Far East and Europe. In 1991, NSCSA (America) Inc., was established to serve as the General Agent...

Reacting to negative statements released by members of the US Senate at the hearing held Tuesday to discuss Saudi Arabia s cooperation in fighting terrorism and extremism, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, the Saudi Ambassador to the US, said that these statements promote false impressions and partial facts. Citing tangible efforts made by the Saudi government in the past few years to fight terrorism, Prince Turki said that the statements of the committee members and of witnesses undermine the will of both the Saudi and the US people, according to Al-Riyadh, the Arabic language daily newspaper. He added that the international community...

A 23-year-old kinsman of the Saudi royal family will spend only a year in jail on scenic Martha’s Vineyard for running down a Cambridge father – allegedly while drunk – under a plea agreement to be presented this morning to a Suffolk Superior Court judge. Bader Al-Saud, a former philosophy student at Suffolk University, was hurtling down Charles Street at nearly 50 mph in a luxury SUV on Oct. 29, 2002. He plowed into Orlando Ramos of Cambridge, killing the 37-year-old itinerant landscaper. His body landed 150 feet away, authorities said. “He killed someone and he gets to pick where...

Responding to last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Saudi Arabia’s role in the war on terror, entitled “Saudi Arabia: Friend or Foe in the War on Terror?”, Riyadh’s ambassador to the U.S., Prince Turki al-Faisal, charged the committee members with ignorance. "Judging by the statements made at the hearing, it appears that the members of the Committee are not fully aware of the significant steps Saudi Arabia has taken in the war on terrorism and extremism.” Worse, according to the prince, U.S. senators “chose to ignore the realities for the sake of political expediency.” Did they really? The U.S....

...Ever since President Bush settled on a policy of promoting democracy in the Middle East, he has been repeatedly lambasted for his alleged hypocrisy: Why advocate democracy for Iraq and Lebanon, say the critics, but not for autocratic U.S. allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia? In this telling, "democracy" is said to be just an alibi for the pursuit of narrow U.S. interests, especially a steady supply of oil. Well, so much for that view. On Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice traveled to Cairo and then Riyadh and, in soft tones, delivered a stark message: America would no...

BOSTON— A Saudi princess was arrested Wednesday on charges she forced two women to be her domestic servants and threatened to harm them if they tried to leave, according to federal prosecutors. Hana Al Jader, a Saudi national, is married to Prince Mohamed Bin Turki Alsaud, according to a source close to the case, speaking on condition of anonymity. It wasn't immediately clear what relationship, if any, the couple has to the Saudi royal family. Al Jader, 39, is accused of confiscating the passports of two Indonesian women who worked as domestic servants at the family's homes in Arlington and...

MIAMI -- Federal prosecutors are tying a Saudi prince with diplomatic immunity to a 2-ton Colombian cocaine smuggling run from Venezuela to Paris on his personal aircraft and $10 million in artwork seized by drug agents pursuing the prince's ex-girlfriend. In opening statements Tuesday, the defense responded that the government's case is built on the word of an enormously successful Colombian drug dealer who "duped" everyone by laundering drug money from behind bars while cooperating with federal agents. Doris Mangeri Salazar, the ex-girlfriend and a Coral Gables real estate agent, and Ivan Lopez Vanegas, who was extradited from Colombia, are...

RIYADH, Feb 15 (AFP) - Saudi Arabia, with close ties to assassinated former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, took issue Tuesday with French calls for an international probe into his death, saying Beirut's own judiciary is capable of doing the job. "The Lebanese people will be the one to protect the integrity of the investigation into this crime," said Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal after a meeting with his visiting French counterpart, Michel Barnier. Billionaire Hariri made his fortune in the construction business in Saudi Arabia, where he maintained close ties with the royal family, and he held dual Lebanese-Saudi citizenship....

Geneva - Osama bin Laden's sister-in-law describes him as a man so driven by his beliefs that he would deny a water bottle to his own infant son in the heat of the Saudi desert. "I'm sure Osama would not have wanted to lose his baby" by his insistence his wife use a spoon instead of a bottle, says Carmen Binladin, the Swiss sister-in-law of the alleged terrorist mastermind. "It was not as if he didn't care about the child. But to him, the baby's suffering was less important than a principle which he probably imagined stemmed from some seventh-century...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - A purported al-Qaida statement Saturday claimed the terror group had kidnapped one American man in the Saudi capital and killed another American. It threatened to treat the captive as U.S. troops treated Iraqi prisoners. Earlier Saturday, an American identified by the U.S. Embassy as Kenneth Scroggs was shot and killed as he pulled his car into the garage of his Riyadh home. The statement claimed al-Qaida had killed an American at his house but did not identify him. The U.S. Embassy confirmed an American was missing but would not identify him. "We do have reports...

Washington will prop up the House of Saud - for now Saudi Arabia has descended into a cauldron of hatreds and divisions Mai Yamani Saturday June 5, 2004 The Guardian (UK) Long before the latest violence erupted, Saudi Arabia's immaculately suited spokesmen were out on the stump, telling anyone who would listen that the situation in the country was completely under control. They're now doing it again - only this time nobody believes them. All the signs suggest that in the face of mounting violence and international pressure, the House of Saud has sunk into terminal denial and paralysis. Convinced...

All-out war between Al Qaeda and house of Saud under way Wednesday, Saudi officials changed the country's charity system, which had helped groups fund terrorism. By Dan Murphy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor CAIRO – The killing of 22 people in the key oil center of Khobar, Saudi Arabia, over the weekend not only helped push oil prices above $42 a barrel - a 20-year high - but deepened the impression that the country is dealing with a terrorist crisis. With three attackers escaping after being pinned down by Saudi forces - apparently disguised in military uniforms...

Brian Whitaker Monday May 31, 2004 The Guardian The weekend carnage in Khobar came less than a month after Saudi Arabia vowed to "strike with an iron fist" against militants who carried out attacks and said it was making every effort to protect foreigners in the kingdom. "The government is doing all it can to protect all residents," the foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, told a news conference. Such assurances have been heard before and will no doubt be heard again, though whether they are likely to cut much ice with the foreign workers on whom the kingdom depends is...

State Department — (04/15/04)-- The State Department says there are "credible indications" of terror threats against Americans in Saudi Arabia. As a result, it is considering withdrawing non-essential U.S. diplomats and their families from the kingdom. The government says the threats include the targeting of diplomatic and other official facilities in Riyadh, along with residential compounds. The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia said in a message yesterday to American citizens in the country that they should stay vigilant, especially in public areas associated with Westerners. (Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This story will be only available...