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The man at the helm of the USS Cole when it was attacked by an Al Qaeda cell in 2000 said last month's release of a Guantanamo Bay detainee linked to the bombers denies justice to the 17 people killed aboard the ship. Kirk Lippold, who was commanding officer of the U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer when suicide bombers aboard a small fishing boat blew a hole in the side of the ship, told FoxNews.com Mashur Abdallah Ahmed al Sabri's release was a mistake. "I would have liked to have seen him receive a military commission where he was tried,...

The radical Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir, which has pursued an Islamic Caliphate since 1953, held a massive conference in Ramallah on Saturday, calling upon the armies of Jordan and Egypt to intervene directly and “free Palestine." Thousands participated in the event, which was billed as “Tent of Believers: the Caliphate Through the Path of the Prophet, and the Tent of Hypocrites, Heretics, and Imperialists." Black-and-white flags bearing the pledge of allegiance to Allah and Mohammed were waved while participants chanted slogans calling for the “liberation” of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. “Officers and soldiers, break down the borders [of Israel],"...

Saudi Arabia has warned the United States that a proposed U.S. law that could hold the kingdom responsible for any role in the Sept 11, 2001, attacks would erode global investor confidence in America, its foreign minister said on Monday. The minister, Adel al-Jubeir, speaking to reporters in Geneva after talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, which mainly focused on Syria, denied that Saudi Arabia had "threatened" to withdraw investment from its close ally. The New York Times reported last month that the Riyadh government had threatened to sell up to $750 billion worth of American assets should...

Saudi Arabia's government has authorized the housing ministry to seek the assistance of Britain, France and China in building hundreds of thousands of homes to ease a shortage of affordable housing in the kingdom. The housing minister and his deputy were given the power to sign memorandums of understanding with those countries, the official Saudi Press Agency reported on Monday. It gave no details of what the agreements might contain, but in March the ministry signed memorandums with South Korea and a Saudi-South Korean consortium to develop 100,000 housing units in northern Riyadh over 10 years. The consortium includes Daewoo...

CIA Director John Brennan said Sunday that releasing the 28 classified pages from the 9/11 Commission report would be a mistake because they contain inaccurate, un-vetted information that could be used to tie Saudi Arabia to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Saudi Arabia’s power behind the throne just took a big step into the spotlight. Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the ambitious, impatient 30-year-old grandson of King Salman, last week was the public face for the launch of “Saudi Vision 2030,” a long-term blueprint designed to steer the kingdom’s economy through a brave new world of falling oil prices and rising competition. The plan marked just the latest move by the prince to put his stamp on the country’s economic, diplomatic and strategic agenda, emerging as the royal to watch as the Saudi ruling family tries to deal with a...

Saudi Arabia’s water minister sacked after complaints over tariffs April 24, 2016 Updated: April 24, 2016 07:10 PM RIYADH // Saudi Arabia’s King Salman fired the water and electricity minister following public complaints over a surge in prices less than six months after the government cut generous utility subsidies. Agriculture minister Abdel Rahman Al Fadhli will take over the water and electricity post from Abdullah Al Hasin, the official Saudi Press Agency reported on Saturday, citing a royal decree. Saudis turned to social media to express their anger after the increase in prices of water and the consumer protection association...

Found in baggage of two passengersSaudi customs authorities seized 2,800 abortion pills which two passengers tried to smuggle into the Gulf Kingdom, a newspaper reported on Thursday. Inspectors at the airport in the Western Red Sea port of Yanbu found 1,792 pills in the baggage of an expatriate passenger arriving in the city. A few hours later, they found 1,008 abortion pills in the bag of another passenger at the same airport, Sada daily said. It said the two passengers were arrested but did not identify them.

Saudi Arabia & Turkey are the reason why we have this war to begin with: Saudi Prince: We agreed with Turkey to put pressure on Europe using Isis. An England residing Saudi prince who wished to remain unknown said: Saudi and Turkey are upset by European governments' policy towards Syria and complain why Europeans cannot make a firm decision about Syrian developments. According to this report, referring to the issue of Syria he continued: We believe if European governments were seriously working in the field of Syria, Bashar al-Assad would have gone by now and recent events lie the Russian...

Reopening of cinemas is part of social changesSaudi Arabia is expected to give permission to cinema companies to open houses again after all of them were shut down many years ago because of Islamist and social opposition, a newspaper in the Gulf kingdom reported on Monday. “Cinema houses will reopen in Saudi Arabia soon…the decision is not in our hands but they will open again because of social changes and the fact that they do not contradict religion,” said Sultan Al Bazi, Chairman of the Saudi culture and arts association. “The current period in the kingdom is witnessing real changes...

An Italian academic appeal to boycott Israeli universities succeeded in obtaining 336 signatures. Of these teachers and researchers, a tenth come from the University of Bologna. But in this oldest university in Europe, no one has shown enough concern to raise a moral issue about the big deal that the Alma Mater Studiorum of Bologna has just signed with Saudi Arabia. Not only that, but some of the protagonists of this academic pact appear in the appeal against the Israeli teachers. It should have been enough to read the report of Freedom House on Saudi universities to figure that maybe...

“WE DON’T care about oil prices,” Muhammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince, recently told Bloomberg, a news agency: “$30 or $70, they are all the same to us.” Such comments by the man calling the shots in the world’s biggest oil power should be taken with a pinch of salt. Low oil prices cost the country billions, threaten its credit rating and are turning it from creditor to debtor: this week it set out to raise $10 billion from global banks. Yet the claim is not entirely hollow, either. Saudi Arabia is determined not to give any succour...

Saudi Arabia single-handedly scuttled the Doha meeting, knowing all along that Iran would not participate, with a valid reason. The Russians and others agreed to proceed without Iran, planning to include them at a later date. So if everything was known beforehand, why did the Saudi’s pour cold water on the aspirations of the remaining members, risking its alienation from Russia and the OPEC community? Was it simply Saudi enmity toward Iran? Not exactly. Upon closer scrutiny, we can find the Saudi masterstroke behind Doha. It is well known that Saudi Arabia is heavily dependent on oil revenues, and that...

RIYADH—Saudi Arabia, crimped by low crude prices, approved Monday a long-term blueprint for the kingdom’s economic transformation aimed at reducing its dependence on oil. The multiyear plan, dubbed “Saudi Vision 2030,” was approved by the cabinet, according to Saudi Arabia’s monarch, King Salman. The Saudi cabinet, in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, said the government’s economic council would be in charge of overseeing the vision’s implementation. Saudi officials later Monday were to present a broad overview of the country’s most extensive economic shake-up in decades. The steep drop in oil prices has given new urgency to...

Is the White House going to release the super secret 9/11 report? Does it implicate Saudi Arabia? Does it implicate the Saudi Royal Family itself? Would releasing the report destabilize the Middle East even more than it already is?Let’s answer these questions backwards, beginning with the last and moving to the first: as soon as you have the answer yell “Bingo!” or, if you’d prefer, “BOZO!”. 1. Would releasing the report destabilize the Middle East even more than it already is? Are you kidding? As we’ve seen for the last 7 years it doesn’t really take that much to destabilize...

The 9/11 attacks were not civil torts. They were acts of war. It is important to keep that fact in the front of our minds as we press for long-overdue disclosure of evidence linking the Saudi Arabian government to the mass murder of nearly 3,000 Americans, to say nothing of the even more overdue investigation of Iran’s contributory role — an investigation that should have been in high gear immediately after the planes struck their targets. Over the years in these pages, we have catalogued the damage done to national security by regarding international terrorism as a mere law-enforcement problem...

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With the topic of Saudi Arabia's involvement in the Sept 11 attack on everyone's lips, if certainly not those of president Obama who is currently in Riyadh where he is meeting with members of Saudi royalty in what may be his last trip to the Saudi nation as US president, many have been clamoring for the information in the suddenly notorious "28-pages" (following the recent 60 Minutes episode) to be released to the public so the US population can finally relegate all those "conspiracy theories" surrounding the real perpetrator behind the Sept 11 terrorist attack to the "conspiracy fact" pile.It...

A Senate bill that would allow families of those killed in the 9/11 attacks to sue the Saudi government has achieved a rare Washington distinction, by uniting the Obama administration and some of its fiercest GOP critics. President Barack Obama and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are rallying to kill the bipartisan plan that would make it possible for American citizens to sue foreign governments believed to be linked to terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., said the plan should be reviewed through regular order before decisions are made about advancing the measure. White House Press...

Legislation that would declassify a portion of the 9/11 Commission report on the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001 "will be vetoed by the President" said Press Secretary Josh Earnest "because it would disclose that government officers in Saudi Arabia provided the 'seed money' for al-Qaeda and, thus, do irreparable damage to the relationship between our two countries." "While there is no evidence that aiding al-Qaeda was the official policy of the Saudi government there is evidence that lower ranking government officials may have been involved," Earnest admitted. "Should the Saudi government have done a better...