House of Saud, News and Current Events 1: April-November 2005


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It`s difficult to trust fully the channel that is based in Qatar,just my opinion.
 
U R right Samira, its the most cheating channel in Arab world .because its let arabs trust it every where, but never show the real truth behind many senses..other channels are known for many arabs ,its just a tungue for the PANDITS .
 
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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad receives Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdel-Aziz at Damascus international airport 07 May 2005. Prince Abdullah who arrived from Egypt is on a regional tour that will also take him to Jordan. Syria's ending of a 29-year troop deployment in neighbouring Lebanon under international pressure last month was expected to loom large in the talks.

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elizahawthorne said:
someone please tell me, King Fahad is still alive, right?

-Eliza
Click to expand...

I think he is still live , although there is a rumor( or fact I don't know ) that he is very ill .
 
Officials: Saudi King Fahd in stable condition


RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) -- Saudi Arabia's King Fahd is in stable condition, a day after he was taken to hospital with pneumonia, Saudi officials said Saturday.

They said the king, in his early 80s and incapacitated by a stroke since 1995, had undergone treatment to have water drained from his lungs. "He has now stabilized," one official said.

Fears about the king's condition had heightened on Friday after a royal statement urged Saudis to pray for his recovery. The palace has issued no further update on his health.

Should Fahd die, diplomats expect a smooth succession in the kingdom, the world's biggest oil exporter, which has been fighting al Qaeda militants trying to topple the royal family.

The script calls for Crown Prince Abdullah, the king's half-brother and a cautious reformist, to ascend the throne and for Defense Minister Prince Sultan to become crown prince.

Life appeared normal in the capital Riyadh, with busy traffic after the Friday weekend and no sign of extra security.

Leaders from fellow Gulf states began arriving in Riyadh for a scheduled summit. Saudi TV showed Abdullah meeting Kuwait's premier, Qatar's emir and the United Arab Emirates' president.

Despite palace assurances, King Fahd's health was of great concern to many Saudis in a country where information is often filtered and rumors fly. Some believed the monarch was in a coma, while others were convinced he was critically ill.

Others took the prayer request as an ominous sign.

"I think the fact the government so quickly told us about the king's condition means things are very serious this time," said Abu Fahad, a 24-year-old university student.

Mohammed Sulaiman, a 47-year-old businessman, went further. "I actually think he is already dead and that the authorities are holding out on telling the people so that the news doesn't come as too much of a shock," he said.

Saudi security sources said princes had started arriving in the Saudi capital, a sign of concern for the king's health.

Witnesses in Beirut said Saad al-Hariri, the son of Lebanon's assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, left for Riyadh on Saturday, even though he is fighting elections in the Lebanese capital on Sunday.

An aide to Hariri said he was paying a brief visit to the king. Hariri, like his slain father, holds Saudi as well as Lebanese citizenship and runs a large business in the kingdom.

King in poor health for years

King Fahd has been ailing for a decade. Rumors about his health have often surfaced in Saudi Arabia and on world oil markets, but this time they appeared to be better founded.

Reports that he was sick were blamed for a 4.7 percent drop in Saudi stock prices on Wednesday. In morning trade on Saturday the index was down nearly 1 percent.

Oil prices jumped to $52 a barrel on Friday on expectations of high U.S. gasoline demand and reports the king was ill.

Equity economist Fawad Rizvi said the long-term outlook for the Saudi stock market was still continued growth. "All things have been controlled by Abdullah for the past 10 years, so [economic] policies are not going to change in the long term."

Fahd has ruled Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Islam, since June 1982, but after his stroke, a weakened and wheelchair-bound king passed control of day-to-day affairs to Abdullah.

Abdullah, commander of the national guard, has overseen a crackdown on al Qaeda militants who waged a campaign of suicide attacks, hostage-taking and assassinations in the Gulf state.

Washington pressed Riyadh to quash militants after mainly Saudi hijackers carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States that were inspired by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden.

The Saudi royal family maintains a tight hold on power in the conservative state, home to Islam's two holiest sites. Its strong alliance with Washington has, however, sparked a violent backlash from Islamist militants loyal to bin Laden.
 
Saudi succession vapors (by Claude Salhani, The Washington Times) Written by Angelina Saturday, 04 June 2005
king_fahd_portrait-19-12-2000.jpg
The Royal House of Saud -- and, in fact, Saudi Arabia -- has long been ruled by the "Sudairi Seven" -- seven powerful brothers who control the most important jobs in the kingdom.

What will occur after King Fahd's death is beginning to concern analysts who feel his passing will affect the succession of would-be king, Crown Prince Abdullah.

For the past 10 years, Fahd has suffered ill health. As a result, Abdullah has managed the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom -- the world's largest oil producer. And one may add, given the turmoil of the past decade in the Arabian Peninsula -- the rise of al Qaeda and homegrown terrorism threatening the royal family -- Abdullah has not fared too poorly.

With the king repeatedly disappearing from public view for extended periods, reports of his death have periodically surfaced, only to be proven false.

Accordingly, last Friday afternoon when the Saudi Institute, a pro-democracy policy institute, issued an "exclusive news bulletin" citing reliable sources in Riyadh that "King Fahd is dead," the news was only too credible. The report added that Fahd, ill since a stroke in 1995, ceding his royal authority to Abdullah de facto, "had been dead since late Wednesday."

A spokesman for the Saudi Institute said the information came from "several well-placed sources in the capital Riyadh," who spoke on condition of anonymity. The statement quoted an unnamed "prominent figure in Riyadh" saying "I am confident he [the king] is dead." There were additional indications making this report more believable, aside from the fact the king had been absent from public view for some time.

Just under a month ago, a confidential memo was made available to United Press International in which King Fahd was reported to be "brain dead." This report emerged after the meeting between President Bush and Prince Abdullah in Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch last April. The report said Abdullah went to Texas to brief Mr. Bush about the Saudi king's health.

The report claimed Fahd was "clinically dead." When UPI tried to confirm the report with a Saudi intelligence source, the source said the "rumor had been going around for about three weeks."

Along with Friday's report of the king's death, there were also unconfirmed reports of the Saudi government canceling all military leave. Some Western media in Saudi Arabia erroneously reported "heightened security alerts."

The Saudi government denied both the king's death and the security alerts. An official at the Royal Saudi Embassy in Washington told UPI Friday King Fahd had been admitted to a Riyadh hospital, but rebutted the death report.

One can safely assume Fahd's residence is equipped with advanced medical facilities, and his move to a hospital indicates a turn for the worse. However, what made the premature death story believable was the fact it came from the Saudi Institute, an outfit that in the past has had a good track record of reporting on human rights abuses from the kingdom.

What happens after Fahd's death is of concern. Should Abdullah become king, as only a half-brother of the Sudairi Seven, the powerful brothers might see it as a loosening of their control over their power base.

The Sudairis come from the same mother, Hassa bint Ahmad al-Sudairi, and are: Fahd bin Abd al-Aziz, the king and prime minister; Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz, second vice minister and minister of defense and aviation; Abd al-Rahmam bin Abd al-Aziz, vice minister of defense; Na'if bin Abd al-Aziz, interior minister; Ahmad bin Abd al-Aziz, interior vice minister ; Salman bin Abd al-Aziz, governor of Riyadh; and Turki bin Abd al-Aziz. Together, they form the most powerful alliance in the kingdom.

Abdullah is "only" a half-brother to the Sudairi Seven. His mother was al-Fadha bint Asi al-Shuraim.

Saudi analysts believe Abdullah "will find it impossible to wrest the throne away from the Sudairis, who many feel want to maintain power" within their branch of the family.

According to the Saudi Institute, the struggle between the Sudairis and Abdullah, if one were to occur, "would pose a greater threat to the regime than the violence the government faced from Islamist militants" last summer. That remains to be seen. But it is clear the death of the king of Saudi Arabia will, if nothing else, affect the region's markets.

Though the news of the king's ill-health and his admission to hospital with pneumonia and fever was no great surprise, Saudi stocks tumbled nearly 1 percent last Saturday, with the morning session ending more than 12,000 points down.

Strife within the royal family would give insurgents new hope. That is why the passing of power -- when it officially happens -- should be seamless.

Claude Salhani is international editor of United Press International.
 
SUEING THE KING: King Fahd's 'wife' wins first round in £32bn court battle Monday, 13 June 2005
janan%20harb%20saudi%20wife.jpg
He is King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, one of the world's wealthiest men. She is Janan Harb, who claims to be one of his wives and is now seeking a share of his estimated £32 billion fortune in maintenance.

For 18 months their lawyers have been fighting in London's Royal Courts of Justice.

His lawyers argue that she cannot press ahead with her claim because the King, aged 82 and in poor health, is entitled to "sovereign immunity", which protects heads of state from being sued in the courts of another country.

The legal battle has been conducted in total secrecy, so much so that the case was given a fictitious name to protect the King's identity and subject to the most stringent orders designed to keep it out of the media.

But now Mrs Harb, 57, who lives in Knightsbridge, has won a significant victory in what promises to be a long and contentious dispute.

Three appeal court judges have granted her permission to appeal against the ruling that the King was entitled to sovereign immunity, and have ruled that the appeal must be held in open court.

So the stage is now set for a public airing of the affairs of the notoriously secretive Saudi Royal Family, of which King Fahd is head.

The King suffered a debilitating stroke 10 years ago and has been in hospital since May 27 with pneumonia and respiratory complications.

He is understood to have little control over his affairs, with his half-brother, Crown Prince Abdullah, taking charge of daily matters. The High Court heard that the King had gone to great lengths to keep the matter private.

In the Appeal Court judgment, made public last week, Lord Justice Thorpe said: "Clearly Mrs Harb was seen as a potential source of embarrassment. That is well illustrated by the fact that on March 1, 2001, an undisclosed principal (in reality the King) had paid Mrs Harb a substantial sum for entering into a binding deed of confidentiality covering all aspects of her past relationship with the King."

Little is known about Mrs Harb, who is believed to be of Jordanian origin, but has British citizenship after living in Britain off and on since the 1970s. It is understood that she is one of three, or possibly four, wives of King Fahd, and that she has two daughters from a previous relationship.

A friend described her as "incredibly strong-willed and determined".

She said: "Janan still loves the King, but she knows none of this is his doing. Her case is really against his advisers. She knows she is blazing a trail here. What she is doing is without precedence in the Middle East, for the wife of a ruler to sue him for maintenance, but she wants to see justice done".

The friend said Mrs Harb was "westernised", which had given her a different perspective. "She is a very proud, independent woman".

Mrs Harb, who still uses her maiden name, filed an application under section 27 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 in January last year. She claimed that she was his wife and that he had failed to provide "reasonable maintenance" for her.

But, instead of settling her claim, his lawyers hit back claiming that the King was immune to the suit.

That view was upheld last October by Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, then England's leading family judge and president of the High Court's Family Division.

She assigned the false name "Maple v Maple", using the surname of the district judge involved in an earlier stage of the case to disguise the identity of the King.

She ruled that he was entitled to secrecy because "once the press become aware of this they will dig a great deal deeper". But the appeal judges rejected her argument, and ruled that Dame Elizabeth, who has since retired, had "misdirected herself" in allowing the immunity issue to be heard in private. If Mrs Harb were to be deprived of the right to have her claim heard, ruled Lord Justice Thorpe, it should "not be secret justice".

"The identity of the sovereign seems to me to be relevant to any public debate of the issues raised by the plea of immunity," he said in his ruling. "The Family Justice system needs to be cautious of adopting fictions such as Maple v Maple that its critics can label as deceitful or designed to shield its workings from public scrutiny".

If Mrs Harb wins her appeal, due to be heard in November, her subsequent maintenance hearing will be heard in private.

By Caroline Davies (Filed: 14/06/2005)
Telegraph
 
I've read about this case in a British newspaper - why is she not seeking a divorce in Saudi Arabia? I think she's very brave, apparantly King Fahd is very ill. Does any1 have any info on her etc...
 
MYbe because she couldn't get a divorce soo easy, she is a woman and in islamic right it is very difficult for her to get divirced there.
In case of men they have a lot more easier they only have to say three times " i divorce with you" 9 or something like this ) and they must have tree eyewitness ( also men) an its done. Or something like this but a little more complicated
 
Amina said:
I've read about this case in a British newspaper - why is she not seeking a divorce in Saudi Arabia? I think she's very brave, apparantly King Fahd is very ill. Does any1 have any info on her etc...
Click to expand...
Under British law she can get half of what he has; under Muslim law, she doesn't even have the right to get divorced.
 
Bubbette said:
Under British law she can get half of what he has; under Muslim law, she doesn't even have the right to get divorced.
Click to expand...

Actually, she does have the right to divorce for your information. In Islam not only is divorce permissible, the husband is also responsible for providing maintenance. "For divorced women maintenance should be provided on a reasonable scale. This is a duty on the righteous" (2:241).
 
FP: Tell us about the close relations between the Al-Saud ruling family and the Wahhabis. What are the roots of this relationship?



Bradley: The relationship between the Al-Saud ruling family and the fanatical followers of Wahhabism goes back to the mid 18th-century, when a member of the Al-Saud dynasty and the founder of Wahhabism, Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab, forged a pact. The Al-Saud needed the Wahhabi zealots as foot soldiers, or storm troopers if you will, as they set out to conquer hostile regions inhabited by non-Wahhabi Muslims. For their part, the Wahhabis wanted converts, and the booty that came from raids. Two Saudi empires rose and fell, until -- with collapse of the Ottoman Empire after WWI -- the Al-Saud finally managed to create a lasting state called the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the third Saudi empire which is still with us to this day.
http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18690


 
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