Posted on 06/16/2012 12:17:37 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Funeral prayers for next in line to Saudi throne to be held on Sunday
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has died in Geneva, Saudi state television said on Saturday, citing a royal court statement.
Nayef, interior minister since 1975, was the heir to Saudi King Abdullah and was appointed crown prince in October after the death of his elder brother and predecessor in the role, Crown Prince Sultan.
Funeral prayers for Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz al-Saud will be held after sunset on Sunday, the royal court said in a statement on Saturday.
Khalifa, Mohammed send condolences
President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan has sent a cable of condolence to The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia, on the death of Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, Saudi Crown Prince, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, who died Saturday morning.
The UAE President expressed his sincere heartfelt condolences and solace to the Custodian of the Two Holy and the bereaved, on the demise of Prince Nayef.
His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai has sent a cable of condolence to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on the death of Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior.
The telegram conveyed his sincere condolences and sympathy of the death of the deceased and prayed that God Almighty bestow his mercy and eternal peace and grant the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and the Al Saud family and the Saudi people patience and fortitude.
PRINCE NAYEF - SECURITY & STABILITY
The royal court announced on Saturday that Nayef, the next in line to the throne had been ill for months and died in Switzerland where he was being treated.
Al Arabiya television reported that the prayers would be held in a mosque in the holy city of Mecca.
No details were released about his illness. He was 78.
Crown Prince Nayef built the formidable security force which crushed an Al Qaeda revolt in Saudi Arabia and with it any dissent against his family's century-old grip on the world's leading oil exporter. To liberals, Nayef, a son of the state's founder, oversaw the fearsome religious police and for years headed an Interior Ministry.
Former diplomats, local journalists and members of the ruling house described him as a more flexible man in private, who survived more than three decades at the centre of a Saudi political system in which dozens of uncles, half-brothers, sons and nephews jostle for influence and fortune.
"Nayef is widely seen as a hardline conservative who at best is lukewarm to King Abdullah's reform initiatives," said a 2009 US diplomatic cable about the prince, who was in his late 70s.
"However, it would be more accurate to describe him as a conservative pragmatist convinced that security and stability are imperative to preserve al-Saud rule and ensure prosperity for Saudi citizens," said the cable, revealed by WikiLeaks.
Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York in 2001, Nayef infuriated Washington, a close ally and big buyer of its oil, by dismissing the initial reports that Saudi citizens carried out the attacks. It turned out 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis.
That incident gave him a reputation in some quarters as anti-Western, but in fact Western diplomats were generally impressed with the way his interior ministry suppressed an al Qaeda bombing campaign inside Saudi Arabia a few years later.
AUSTERE DESERT KINGDOM
Like the rest of his family, personal details of the prince's life were rarely confirmed officially, or left vague.
Nayef was born in around 1933 in Taif, the mountain town where the royal court would annually retreat to each year from the stifling summer heat of the desert capital Riyadh and the Red Sea port of Jeddah, the kingdom's second city.
Saudi Arabia had only a year earlier come into being as a state. Nayef's father King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, over the course of the preceding 30 years of warfare and diplomacy, had united the Bedouin tribes behind his vision of a pure Islamic state. He conquered much of the Arabian peninsula, securing his family's control over Islam's holiest sites at Mecca and Medina.
Growing up in the royal court of the 1930s and 1940s, Nayef is of the last generation of Saudi leaders who knew the austere desert kingdom, partly built on their historic alliance with Wahhabi clerics, before the first flush of oil wealth changed it beyond all recognition.
A son of Ibn Saud by his favourite wife Hassa bint Ahmed al-Sudairi, Nayef was one of seven of her sons who were groomed young for high office and formed their own power bloc within an extended family that included nearly 40 other half-brothers.
Known as the "Sudairi seven", Hassa's sons also included Fahd, who was later king, the late Prince Sultan, Prince Salman, the current defence minister and likely successor as crown prince, and Prince Ahmed, who was deputy interior minister.
Nayef's own son Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, a well regarded deputy interior minister in the current admin, headed Saudi efforts to root al Qaeda from the kingdom.
Named governor of Riyadh aged only 20, Nayef impressed his father and went on to become interior minister in 1975 where he was soon known as an ally of the Wahhabi clerics who supported Saudi rule and had run the palace school of his childhood.
It was this ministerial role that came to define Nayef by giving him responsibility for protecting the kingdom from internal threats - most frequently from Islamist militants.
"Given his paramount concern with maintaining stability, Nayef's instincts tend towards concessions to religious demands, especially on cultural-social issues," said the leaked US appraisal of him in 2009. "This is sometimes misinterpreted as opposition to reform, but more likely stems from a desire to balance competing social forces."
As the man to whom regional governors answered, Nayef personally handled the petitions of individual Saudi citizens on a daily basis, cultivating a network of supporters across a kingdom where tribal and regional ties still matter.
IMPISH HUMOUR
Despite his fierce reputation atop the internal security forces, Nayef was said by princes to be among the kinder members of the al-Saud dynasty, treating nephews and nieces of the younger generation with more consideration than his peers.
That avuncular side to his character contrasted with the image he sometimes showed to foreign diplomats, who described him as prickly and, in the US appraisal, stiff, slow and shy, despite occasional flashes of "impish" humour.
“Boooring! been there done that!”
Abdulaziz is now Abdul as was.
“Paradise” may have a rather different meaning for Islam than it does for Christianity.
Is this the guy Bush was kissing on?
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince , well I think there are like a million more
It’s only one, but a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. sd
I don’t think so - the article says he’s only been in the job since OCT so he didn’t hold the job for very long ...
Some people do like hot weather.
Being ripped apart and tortured by angry demons forever, still haven’t found a person who would go for that.
The Koran being a pimp's manual.
Wow....I’m all broken up.....
So sad another camel kissing, goat humping, child raping “Prince” of the house of Saud follower of the mad dog pedophile Mo’ ham aids
Now that is news.
You are FAR too kind.
Yeah.....I do need to respect the dead..../ s
As far as I’m concerned the faster we turn Mecca and Medina into glass cities the better...
You don’t appease a cancer like Islam, you kill it....
So Obama will be in mourning for how long?
Once again you are FAR too kind.
Mecca, Medina, Damascus, Tehran, Cairo, Mogadishu, and maybe Kabul all at the same time.
GLASS.
Ya trying to make a statement, make a firm one.
The only good mozlum is a dead one.
The reason is that, to consolidate power, King Abdulaziz took a wife from each of the major tribes that supported him (22 wives in total, producing 37 sons). The kingship thus really rotates among the tribes, with some odd politics going on as well.
As far as I’m concerned the faster we turn Mecca and Medina into glass cities the better...
You don’t appease a cancer like Islam, you kill it....
—
Properly speaking, you irradiate it ... a 5Mt thermonuclear burst works wonders ...
Finally some good news.
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