Free Republic

Saudi Arabia has threatened to execute those who 'spread rumours' about the government on social media, a state-run website has reported. It is the first time the Gulf nation, which has come under fire for issuing death penalties to protesters, has created a rule to punish ordinary people for what they say on Twitter and Facebook, human rights campaigners Reprieve told MailOnline. There are already laws and departments to censor mass media in the country, which is known to crush dissidence with capital punishment. Only the worst 'rumour-mongers' will be executed, while lesser offenders will be punished with lashes, imprisonment,...

Russian warplanes pounded Syrian rebels unaffiliated with Islamic State on Sunday, insurgents said, helping Moscow's ally Bashar al-Assad reclaim territory and dealing a fresh setback to the strategy of Washington and its allies. President Vladimir Putin - who has infuriated Assad's enemies in the United States, Europe, Turkey and the Arab world by bombing the rebels to protect him - reached out to one of the Syrian leader's fiercest opponents by meeting the powerful defense minister of Saudi Arabia. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group that monitors the 4-year-old conflict, said the Syrian military and its Lebanese Hezbollah...

A Saudi Arabian official has reportedly disclosed that the Sunni kingdom sent Syrian rebels a new batch of one of the most effective weapons for battling against the Assad regime this week. BBC correspondent Frank Gardner tweeted that a Saudi official confirmed the delivery of 500 TOW antitank missiles to the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The FSA is currently being squeezed from all directions by the Syrian military, Russian airstrikes, and competition from jihadist fighters, including ISIS. The delivery of the TOW missiles — which have also been provided by the CIA — will increase the capabilities of the FSA...

U.S. President Barack Obama tried to convince the King of Saudi Arabia to coordinate actions in the oil market to reduce world oil prices, the main source of Russia's export revenues, and "punish its behavior" in Crimea. Experts estimate that if the prices are reduced by as little as 12 dollars per barrel, the Russian Federation will lose $40 billion in revenue. There has been a precedent, because this is precisely how the USSR collapsed. Before Obama's visit to Saudi Arabia, the U.S. media was discussing options of "punishment" for Russia with sanctions for its "behavior in Crimea." The first...

Election officials have warned all 366 registered women candidates against addressing voters directly. They have asked them to appoint agents to do this on their behalf. The officials have also directed these candidates to create separate sections for men and women at their campaign headquarters. The officials said that violators of gender segregation rules will be fined SR10,000. The elections will take place between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Dec. 12 with the results being announced the following day. Judiea Al-Qahtani, the election commission spokesman, has asked all female candidates to acquire permits for their advertising campaigns, and to...

Sounds like knees are knockin in the ME and Saudis offered to go and ask for something... The visit of the Saudi official to Moscow against the backdrop of Russia's anti-terrorist operation in Syria, which Saudi Arabia remains vehemently opposed to, may indicate Riyadh's willingness to compromise with Moscow. Saudi Arabia hopes to change Moscow's attitude towards the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, promising strategic partnership and multi-billion-dollar projects. Noteworthy, Saudi Arabia remains one of the most ardent opponents to Bashar al-Assad. -

Saudi Arabia has summoned the Czech ambassador over a coming translation of Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses.” A Saudi Foreign Ministry official said the ambassador was asked Friday to censor the coming Czech translation because the book “distorts the true religion of Islam.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorized to speak to journalists. …

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Four male Johnson & Wales University students have been arrested in connection with a reported sexual assault and alleged drugging of two female students at the university. The police have charged Mohammed Alsaqer, a 20-year-old sophomore, and Yazeed Alasiri, a 23-year-old senior, both from Saudi Arabia, with assaulting the women at the young men’s residence in Pawtucket after meeting the women at a nightclub in Providence on Thursday night. Late Tuesday night, Pawtucket police charged two more Johnson & Wales students — Mohammed Aljohani, 20, and Tareq Alharbi, 22 — with first-degree sexual assault.

At least 80 women were killed in the wedding airstrikes, said Yemeni medical officials. Fighter jets of the Saudi-led coalition bombing the Shiite Houthi group in Yemen mistakenly struck a wedding ceremony in Mokha city in Taiz province with several missiles, the official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. There was no immediate comment from the Saudi-led Arab coalition, which launched an air war on the Huthi rebels in late March in support of embattled President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. There is concern over the increase in civilian fatalities in Yemen in recent times, which was highlighted by the deaths of...

WASHINGTON — Americans following this year's presidential campaign would never know it from mainstream media coverage, but the commander in chief we hired four years ago has set the United States on a course for unilateral disarmament. The following people hope you won't notice until after Nov. 6: Vladimir Putin, Liang Guanglie, Kim Jong-un, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Sayyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, A.Q. Khan and of course, Barack Obama. The 10 individuals above share a common fascination: nuclear weapons. Vladimir Putin, Russia's modern czar; Liang Guanglie, minister of national defense for...

With an already outsized influence over the United States, Saudi Arabia is spending millions to bolster its image in Washington. Despite repeated calls from the United Nations and human rights groups like Amnesty International and Reprieve, Saudi Arabia still plans to execute Ali Mohammed al-Nimr for participating in anti-government protests when he was a minor. Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, right, meets with Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal. © AP PHOTO/ AKIRA SUEMORI REVEALED: UK, Saudi Arabia Conspired in Secret Deal to Clinch UN Human Rights Seats While the international community has condemned Riyadh’s insistence on crucifying...

Saudi Arabia on Sunday made deep reductions to the prices it charges for its oil, hard on the heels of cuts last month by rival producers in the Gulf. With U.S. production still increasing despite lower oil prices, members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are battling to keep their share of the last growing markets in Asia. In a list of official prices sent to customers, state-oil company Saudi Aramco cut the price of its light-crude deliveries to Asia by $1.7 a barrel. As a result, it switched to a discount of $1.6 a barrel against the...

Woman could face jail on defamation charges: lawyer A Saudi woman could be jailed for up to one year for publishing a film showing her husband flirting with his housemaid in the kitchen, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. The unnamed wife had caught her husband flirting with the maid in the kitchen at their house in the Gulf Kingdom and secretly filmed him with her mobile phone. She then published the film on social media and wrote a caption saying: “the minimum punishment for this husband is to scandalise him.” ‘Sada’ newspaper said the film went viral on social media...

Dozens of Islamist Saudi Arabian clerics have called on Arab and Muslim countries to "give all moral, material, political and military" support to what they term a jihad, or holy war, against Syria's government and its Iranian and Russian backers. Although the clerics who signed the online statement are not affiliated with the government, their strong sectarian and anti-Christian language reflects mounting anger among many Saudis over Russian and Iranian involvement in Syria's civil war. Russia last week started air strikes against Syrian opposition targets that it describes as aimed at weakening the jihadist Islamic State group, a move Riyadh...

Dozens of Islamist Saudi Arabian clerics have called on Arab and Muslim countries to "give all moral, material, political and military" support to what they term a jihad, or holy war, against Syria's government and its Iranian and Russian backers. Although the clerics who signed the online statement are not affiliated with the government, their strong sectarian and anti-Christian language reflects mounting anger among many Saudis over Russian and Iranian involvement in Syria's civil war. Russia last week started airstrikes against Syrian opposition targets that it describes as aimed at weakening the jihadist Islamic State group, a move Riyadh has...

There's strange news coming — and being redacted — from the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Heath about the death toll of Saturday's Hajj stampede in Mina. As the baffling fatality numbers have shown, this is the worst disaster to strike Hajj since 1990. But just how large those numbers are is a debate still raging days after the accident. The ministry's Arabic website said Tuesday some 4,000 people died in the crush. The announcement's since been wiped from the page, but not before people (including Al Bawaba) managed to capture a screen shot. See it below. Here's the translation: The...

Russian fighter jets launched from a new airbase in Syria have persuaded western critics to mute their demands for the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, but another group of his opponents sees Moscow’s intervention as more provocative than decisive. Regional powers have quietly, but effectively, channelled funds, weapons and other support to rebel groups making the biggest inroads against the forces from Damascus. In doing so, they are investing heavily in a conflict which they see as part of a wider regional struggle for influence with bitter rival Iran. In a week when Russia made dozens of bombing raids, those...

Russian fighter jets launched from a new airbase in Syria have persuaded western critics to mute their demands for the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, but another group of his opponents sees Moscow’s intervention as more provocative than decisive. Regional powers have quietly, but effectively, channelled funds, weapons and other support to rebel groups making the biggest inroads against the forces from Damascus. In doing so, they are investing heavily in a conflict which they see as part of a wider regional struggle for influence with bitter rival Iran. In a week when Russia made dozens of bombing raids, those...

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi says Baghdad is willing to share anti-ISIS intelligence with Russia, Iran and Syria Oct 4, 2015 08:06 GMT Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi announced on Saturday that Iraq will share anti-ISIS intelligence with Russia, Iran and Syria if cooperation is requested. “We have been fighting ISIS more than a year and we have some important security information that no other country has regarding ISIS,” Abadi stated during a press conference which took place at the presidential office in the capital. Abadi also stated that he would welcome military equipment assistance from Iran, Syria...

LONDON: Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly sending 150,000 soldiers to Syria to wipe out the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). According to The Daily Star, he is apparently mounting an enormous military mission to take control of the terror group's stronghold of Raqqa. Raqqa is the self-declared capital of ISIS which is patrolled by as many as 5,000 jihadi members. Putin is set to mobilise 150,000 reservists whom he conscripted into the military earlier this week.