"Five bodies
hang from a pole suspended between two cranes, a public display which
serves as a reminder to those who might contemplate a life of crime.
They
belonged to a gang of five robbers, all of whom were publicly beheaded
before their corpses were hoisted high in the air, where they remained
for days. The
gruesome sight is one scene in a shocking documentary to be aired this
week which sheds light on life in Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s
bloodiest and most secretive countries.
The film,
Saudi Arabia Uncovered, contains harrowing footage of beheadings. A
woman dressed in black is held down at the side of a public road by four
Saudi policemen, after she has been convicted of killing her
stepdaughter.
She is executed with a sword blow to the neck, as she screams: ‘I did not do it.’
We have all heard of the brutality of the Saudi regime, but what makes this documentary so chilling is that we see it on camera. In
another beheading scene, the executioner, dressed in the white robes
typically worn by Saudi men, raises his curved sword above his head and
brings it down in a single sweep.
The
documentary introduces viewers to a large public space nicknamed Chop
Chop Square because it is the site of so many executions in the Saudi
capital, Riyadh. The camera lingers on the red-stained drainage system
used to wash away the blood of those executed.
Police
are seen brandishing whips against women, who are considered
second-class citizens. At one point they brutally knock a woman to the
ground and you hear her scream.
In
a similar vein, a male supermarket customer pushes a female shopper to
the floor for no apparent reason. He then walks past her, oblivious to
her anguish, as she scurries terrified out of his way. What the film makes abundantly clear is that the country is a murderous dictatorship which refuses to tolerate dissent.
Yet Saudi
Arabia remains one of Britain’s closest allies, not just in the Middle
East but worldwide, as it has for nearly a century. We sell them arms.
They sell us oil. The royal families of each country are close. Prince
Charles has made numerous trips to the kingdom and, when King Abdullah
died last year, flags at Westminster flew at half-mast in a highly
unusual tribute to a foreign ruler.
Our leaders conveniently overlook the truth about the desert kingdom.
In
Saudi Arabia, even a minor criticism of the regime can result in a
lashing or long prison sentence. Beheadings, the film makes clear, are
commonplace — so far this year, the country has been executing its
people at the rate of almost one a day.
Ferocious
moral codes are enforced by the religious police as they patrol the
streets and shopping malls. Blasphemy is punishable by stoning or
execution, theft by amputation. Anyone found guilty of insulting Islam
faces ten years in prison or perhaps 1,000 lashes.
The
outside world is kept in ignorance of most of this because it is
impossible for foreign journalists to report from or film in Saudi
Arabia without minders. Indeed, it is difficult to get into the country
even as a tourist.
Only because
of the extraordinary bravery of the film’s makers, and Saudi democracy
activists who helped them, is the truth now being aired.
The
documentary is based on six months of undercover filming and its
footage of beatings and beheadings is disturbing enough. But it also
exposes the extremes of wealth and poverty in this oil-rich country.
Furthermore,
it tells the story of the men and women who dare to speak out against
the Saudi dictatorship, and reveals the terrible price they have to pay
for their courage.
The film, to be shown tomorrow night, is a shared production by ITV and the Public Broadcasting Service in the U.S.
This
is the same broadcasting combination which caused a storm of
international controversy when, nearly 36 years ago, it screened Death
Of A Princess, the story of a Saudi princess and her lover who were
executed for adultery.
In
the resulting furore, the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia was
expelled and trade contracts were broken off. The film was condemned by
the Foreign Office because it offended Saudi rulers, and it has never
been reshown on British television.
Already,
similar pressure is being brought to bear over this new documentary.
Saudi activist Loujain al-Hathloul, who campaigns for women’s rights in a
country where women are not even allowed to drive — and who was jailed
and treated as a terrorist after posting an online video of herself
driving a car — has received death threats after taking part in the
film.
It is easy to see why such an exposé might be greeted with horror by the Saudi establishment.
The
brutality aside, secret filming in a Saudi mosque shows a preacher
spreading grotesque anti-Semitic messages. ‘The Jews have abused,
dictated and contaminated the land,’ he says. ‘So, oh Allah, stop them
and spill on them the whip of torture, don’t let their flag fly high,
and make an example of them.’
The
film reveals how hatred is directed at other religions in Saudi
schools. One of the secret cameramen asks a 14-year-old Saudi boy what
he is taught at school. Back comes the reply: ‘The Christians should be
punished with death until there are none left. They should be beheaded.’
But
schoolchildren are not just taught to direct hatred at Christians and
Jews. They are also instructed to turn on Shia Muslims, a substantial
minority in Saudi Arabia.
The
boy says chillingly: ‘We learn that the Shia are blasphemers. They
should be punished by death. We should fight them in the name of Islam.’
The film
includes rare footage of desperate Shia in the east of Saudi Arabia
bravely protesting against their oppression. It illustrates how one
young protester, Ali Nimr, was arrested at the age of 17 and sentenced
to be beheaded, with his headless body displayed publicly for two days
for his role in the protests.
The
British Government says it has received assurances that he will not now
be killed, but Saudi media reports last week suggested he could be
executed imminently.
Ali’s
uncle, Sheikh Nimr, a controversial Shia cleric, was executed on
January 2 this year, along with 46 other men, in Saudi Arabia’s largest
execution since 1980.
The
British Government is well aware of all the brutality meted out in
Saudi Arabia. Here is what the UK embassy in Riyadh says in its
information pack for British prisoners in the desert kingdom: ‘The Saudi
courts impose a number of severe physical punishments. The
death penalty can be imposed for a wide range of offences including
murder, rape, armed robbery, repeated drug use, apostasy, adultery,
witchcraft and sorcery, and can be carried out by beheading with a
sword, stoning or firing squad.’
Anyone who
protests against the Saudi regime faces harrowing punishments. One
blogger, Raif Badawi, was convicted of insulting Islam after making
public comments about his government and Islam.
‘The
only way to deal with an unfree world,’ he wrote, ‘is to become so
absolutely free that your very existence becomes an act of rebellion.’
For
comments like this, Badawi, a father of three whose family now live in
exile, was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and ten years in jail.
The
religious police even ban the playing of music in public. The film
contains disturbing footage of them smashing a lute which was being
played on a beach.
The
police ruthlessly enforce their militant version of Islam, known as
Wahhabism. There is footage of these state-sponsored fanatics forcing
women to cover themselves, complaining about them wearing make-up and
herding people out of cafes to pray.
The
official title of the religious police is the Committee for the
Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Chillingly, only two
other movements in the world — the Taliban in Afghanistan and Islamic
State in Syria and Iraq — have organisations with the same name.
The
Saudi government has always denied that it has any connection either
with Islamic State or with Al Qaeda. Nevertheless, both jihadist
organisations endorse the state religion which Saudi Arabia has spent an
estimated $70 billion (£48 billion) exporting around the world.
Saudi Arabia
denies any link to terrorism, and is indeed preparing to send troops to
fight Islamic State in Syria. But this film examines evidence to
suggest that there were links between the Saudis and Al Qaeda in the
period before the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11.
It
is well known that 15 of the 19 Al Qaeda-inspired 9/11 hijackers were
Saudi citizens. However, there have always been suggestions that the
links ran much deeper, and the film offers compelling evidence that this
might indeed be the case.
This
is a documentary that exposes the deep hypocrisy of Saudi Arabia’s
relationship with Britain and the West. Britain is determined to
maintain this relationship even though the country it deals with is, by
any definition, barbaric.
The
film even shows how the fearsome Saudi police — who fire bullets at
unarmed protesters and activists simply for expressing an opinion
contrary to the state’s — are trained by the British Government’s
College of Policing.
Our
nation’s friendship with Saudi Arabia means collaborating with a regime
that persecutes its own citizens with a savagery that defies
imagination.
Some
might argue that this domestic brutality is a matter for Saudi Arabia
alone.
When he was asked recently to justify our relationship with the
Saudis, David Cameron replied that the country’s intelligence services
have provided vital information exposing terror plots aimed at Britain.
Yet this argument is undermined by the undoubted fact that Saudi Arabia exports its murderous jihadi ideology around the world.
On the basis of this deeply disturbing film, it is time to reassess Britain’s connection with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia Uncovered, produced by Hardcash Productions, is on ITV tomorrow (3/21) at 10.40pm."
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