A stretch in confinement is never fun. Whether it is a chain gang or breaking “big stones into little stones,” time in jail can be endless. . . . unless you are a Saudi prince or official. After a surprising crackdown on corruption and the arrest of princes and senior officials, the accused were ordered to be held in home confinement at the ultra-luxury Ritz Carlton in Riyadh. The accused will be guaranteed “three squares a day” on a prison menu at various top restaurants that includes “Squid ink, mixed pan-seared seafood” and “Ossobuco alla Milanese, saffron risotto, and pecorino foam” at hundreds of dollars a pop. While there is no prison yard with a weight set, there is the spa with the “Royal Groom of Arabia treatment.”
Among the wretched accused in the Ritz stir, is royal billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal who has extensive holdings in Western companies and his Kingdom Holding Co.. He and others are accused of money laundering, bribery, and corruption. Recently Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman delighted civil libertarians with a speech that he would seek to remove extremist religious elements from the kingdom. He now appears to be keeping his word on ending corruption. These are remarkably promising signs for the Kingdom for those of us who have been long critics.
Of course, the Ritz is not exactly Folsom Prison but the princes will have stories to tell when they get “back to the world.”
Gosh, I hope their harems will be accompanying them while they’re under these insufferable detention conditions.
What an innovative approach to criminal justice.
They may pay a little more for incarceration but think of what they save on prosecution with all the pleas.
Who wouldn’t cop a plea to stay at the Ritz.
bfm – I recommend to you A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. This is what happens when you get imprisoned in a 5-star hotel in Moscow during the Revolution.
Thanks Paul, I know I can always count on you to suggest a good read.
“The Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh, the de facto royal hotel, was evacuated on Saturday…”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-waleed-bin-talal.html
Some “guests” were apparently given the boot, so the royals could have the run of the place?
It appears so.
If I didn’t know better I would take this seriously enough to assume it was posted and approved by the DNC to pay off some of their pay for play losses. Or it is an entirely to HillaScam-ary. But since I know better and something of the rules on who to treat their royalty…..
This smells of a family disagreement. With four wives each, the Saud Royal family has an interminable number of royals. A work ethic being frowned upon as being for foreigners and the lower classes, lots of money, a lazy attitude, dominating women as if they were slaves from infancy, and a legal double standard spells for lots of hijinks. Saudi Princes are rather infamous when they travel abroad. In any case, there are often intense squabbles between the numerous half brothers of one family, let alone all the cousins.
Much of the Middle East runs on graft. It’s considered tipping. It is remarkable and questionable why certain princes would suddenly be held accountable for it, but not others. This smacks of an intrigue that may, or may not, have to do with the Crown Prince’s position on religion.
We all know what happened to the Shah of Iran when he fought the mullahs and threw them out of the sooks. The mullahs coordinated not only with Soviet and Persian communists (who would, by definition, oppose all religion), they also fed information to the US, claiming the Shah violated human rights.
We will have to wait and see what happens to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The Shah’s regime was abusive. FWIW, the cross-sectional assessment of Freedom House during the years running from 1972-78 put the degree of abuse at about the regional median. Freedom House’s grading system can be somewhat blackboxy, to be sure.
During the period running from 1953 to 1978, Cyprus, Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Kuwait, and Pakistan were the only countries in the Near East, North Africa, and Central Asia where the political order maintained an element of pluralism, competition, and public deliberation (more often than not).
https://apotik1.blogspot.co.id
yes i like this
Ha, ha, ha. One theocratic autocrat puts a few others in “jail” for doing what he does every day. I see no change in that ridiciudlos country. Bloggers are still languishing in real jail; blahphemy trials are still on going and men and women are still lashed for nothing more than saying something the princes don’t like. I can just hear the American PR flacks saying do something…say you are rooting out corruption; say women can drive. It doesn’t matter what you actually do. Just say it.
Maybe they have been assigned to the lowest class rooms and will have to endure the low class menu from outside, like McDonald’s?
“https://www.westernjournalism.com/egypt-shut-27000-mosques-effort-curb-radicalization/”