We previously discussed how Princess Hassa bint Salman Al Saud, the sister of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the latest Saudi royal accused of brutal violence against individuals outside of their country. The Princess was found guilty of the beating of a local craftsman who was renovating her luxury Paris apartment three years ago. However, once again, she will escape any real punishment just as her brother has escaped any repercussions for the savage murder of a journalist in Turkey.
The Princess was allowed to flee the country and has now been convicted in absentia and given a 10-month suspended sentence and fined €10,000 ($11,000). In other words, she ordered a bodyguard to beat Ashraf Eid, an Egyptian-born French national, and the French court just shrugged and hit her with a fine that is less than an evening out on the town for the Princess.
Eid said that she ordered her bodyguard to beat him after she accused him of taking photos and videos of her in September 2016.
Her bodyguard was also given a suspended eight-month suspended sentence and ordered to pay a €5,000 ($5,600) fine. Chump change but we are the chumps. The Saudi Royal family has shown once again that law, even laws against murdering people, have little relevance to them.
The manner in which the phrases are laid out in the topic heading leads one reader to believe that the crime was committed in abstentia. Not the conviction. The author should read his posts before posting. This is not the Post Dispatch. Or a postal zone. Or a post trial disorder.
And what does this post have to do with free speech?
Tomorrow is Friday the 13th with a full moon.
Benson,
You think Friday the 13th with a full moon is weird and wonderful? I would say you’re a goofball but that would be discourteous and impolite. Have you heard of the goofball book, Baron Trump’s Marvellous Underground Journey written by Ingersoll Lockwood in 1889? It practically quotes the unfolding “Trump” scenario but there’s one problem – it’s from 130 years ago.
https://www.amazon.com/Baron-Trumps-Marvellous-Underground-Journey/dp/1981535225
Yeah, its called predictions. I have them sometimes. You get use to them. You can ask my friends.
And no, I do not do lottery predictions for the 10,000th time.
what’s the fine, around $15,000 USD? ten months? for a hired beating? not a light sentence per se. simple assault is usually a misdemeanor.
foreign nationals who commit crimes often skedaddle, not just Saudis.
ask yourselves how many Mexicans have committed crimes here and then disappeared prior to sentencing. anybody got a number for that? and they weren’t royalty, not by any stretch
Saudi Arabia is united with Israel against Iran. So this makes, by definition, anyone who does not approve of the Al Saud Krime Syndikat (torturers, beheaders, a military dictatorship masquerading as King Arthur’s Round Table), an “anti-Semite.” So sayeth the anti-goyim Israeli-firsters populating this blog.
It’s hard to take you terribly seriously, Trohar. Still, if I thought you had a working mind rather than a simulacrum of one, I’d point out the following:
1. Israel’s not responsible for the foolishness of the French court system (or any other Eurotrash court system).
2. Any assessment of Saudi Arabia’s political order properly includes an assessment of likely alternatives to that order.
3. That Israel has some interests in common with other countries in the region doesn’t render Israel culpable for the internal disorders of those countries. The same applies to any country which might be on Iran’s target list.
4. It’s pretty rum to fancy our foreign policy stance should turn on the malicious little quarrels various members of the (very large) Saudi royal family have with their employees.
Saudi Arabia is pitiful. Saudi Arabia exists under the severe dictatorship of a monarchy. America exists under the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” The inmates have taken over the asylum. The Founders established a rational, restricted-vote republic but the principles of communism prevail. America is on the Road to Perdition.
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“A Republic, If You Can Keep It”
– Neil Gorsuch
The Supreme Court Justice is on to something. A republic is of “…a body of citizens entitled to vote…” distinctly not a one man, one vote democracy. Justice Gorsush quotes Ben Franklin and Franklin’s was a restricted-vote republic in which voters were generally required to be Male, European, 21 with 50 lbs. Sterling or 50 acres. Democracy has been restricted-vote republicanism since inception in Greece and Rome. In 1789, voting rights restrictions were understood and not codified because the Founders presumed rational, minimal modification of the restrictions, not the madness of allowing foreigners* and parasites to vote themselves largesse (aliens/minorities/women/children/public workers don’t need to vote because their sole concern and overwhelming greed for ever higher welfare and compensation is eminently predictable).
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Merriam-Webster
republic noun
re·pub·lic | \ ri-ˈpə-blik
\
Definition of republic
b(1) : a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law
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The American republic is theoretically and legally under the dominion of the Constitution which provides maximal freedom to individuals under a government that exists merely to facilitate that maximal freedom.
The entire American welfare state is unconstitutional.
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* “The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”
– Alexander Hamilton
This what the royals do. The men must be pious at home, but are hedonists abroad. Both the men and women abuse domestic staff, servants, and workmen, without repercussions.
I asked my father once why we maintain such close ties to the Saudis, giving them coveted military technology. Why the Middle East matters. The way he explained it sounded like Game of Thrones, which would come years later. I have forgotten most of the Borgia-like machinations. What I do recall is the Saudis allied with us, while Iran did so with the Russians. One group has the West and the Sunnis, while the other has the former USSR and the Shi’ite. Each struggles against the other group for different reasons. The Saudis and the Turks provide us access to the Middle East, to monitor the spread of Iran’s and Russia’s influence…Iran, whose schoolchildren begin each day chanting, “Death to Israel, Death to America!” Russia, who would like to see the spread of socialist doctrine. It would be delighted for a Socialist to win the next Presidency. Then there is China, who supports socialist regimes, and often opposes us on these axes, but it is heavily invested in the United States. This might prove problematic for us at some point. No matter how much intellectual property China steals, or the hacking, or the unequal trade, the very threat of a trade war or tariffs affects global markets. They have powerful economic leverage at us, which forces us to either ignore, or be very quiet, about the war on internet theft and spying.
We learned to our detriment how greatly OPEC can affect our ability to get groceries on the shelves, and for our country to function. That is one of the reasons why it is vital to develop domestic energy sources, as well as access to the oil of our closer allies (i.e. Keystone.) It reduces the leverage.
It has come out that Obama blocked the release of information revealing Saudi involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in order to protect that cursed Iran Nuclear deal during his own presidency. This concern also led to his decision not to get too closely involved in Syria. Now Trump is seeking for more delays, for the same reason as all of the predecessors – not to strain US/Saudi relations. With Iran’s nuclear ambitions surely to become realized one day, we believe we need the Saudis.
We look the other way at the human rights abuses, the Armenian genocide by the Turks, all because of geopolitical considerations and the logistics of the region. It’s a Machiavellian tradeoff with no realistic alternative yet produced.
It would behoove the Saudis to realize that they desperately need the West, too. They have drained their thousand year aquifers to grow wheat in the sands, and run huge dairies. The oasis are drying up. Saudi thinks its most precious resource is oil, but it’s not. It’s water. All of its food and beverage imports are really water imports. One day, soon, there will be a crisis, and I think it will come before the region’s oil reserves dry up. They are wasting time, and desalination plants are not going to solve the problem or curb desertification.
They’re living like the grasshoppers in Aesop’s fables.
And yet, both China and Saudi Arabia hold significant leverage over the United States, from thousands of miles away. There are no separate spheres in which to operate. Just as the sand from the Rub’ al Khali blows on the Kharif to the rest of the world, so the actions of faraway countries affect our own.
Karen, is it really your contention that Mohammed Atta et al were agents of the Saudi government?
There’s nothing all that esoteric about our dealings with Saudi Arabia. They’re the government covering most of the Arabian peninsula. The dynasty has been consequential in the Nejd since the early 19th century. There isn’t a ready alternative to the dynasty and it’s allied ulema. We have ordinary diplomatic and trade relations with them. Intermittently, since 1990, we’ve been permitted a modest garrison there. Your alternative is what?
Snow covering the ground in Norilsk.
Anyone who is dubbed a “Prince or Princess or King or Queen” is a dork and people need to throw turds at them.
Very pungent erudite and pithy commentary. Thanks for sharing.
It is not clear that the princess had to flee the country, only that she was convicted in absentia. If she is otherwise immune from incarceration and/or can easily afford the fine, she could return to the country and write the check.
I’ll wager you the light sentence is par for the course in France. See Theodore Dalrymple on sentencing practice in Britain. Intermittently, it’ll be harsher over here, at which point our intelligentsia complains about ‘mass incarceration’.
You want something done right, you don’t ask Eurotrash to do it.
I saw pictures of the inside of that apartment and it is gorgeous. She spent at least $11,000 on the front door.
I’ll have to check it out. Now I’m curious if it is tasteful or totally gauche and ostentatious like a gold toilet.
If you have a link, do share. I keep finding pics of MBS and abayas, not not any interiors.