U.S. Terrorist’s Conviction Upheld

Holy crap, a court with balls.

A U.S. appeals court on Friday upheld the conviction of an American citizen for plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush and conspiring with al Qaeda, rejecting his claims that he had been tortured into confessing by the Saudi police.

As part of its ruling, the appeals court based in Richmond, Virginia, overturned Ahmed Abu Ali’s 30-year prison sentence on the grounds it was unreasonably lenient and sent the case back for resentencing.

“In this case, we are satisfied that Abu Ali received a fair trial, though not a perfect one, and that the criminal justice system performed those functions which the Constitution envisioned for it,” the three-judge panel concluded.

Abu Ali’s lawyers argued he had been tortured into confessing while he was held in Saudi Arabia, but the appeals court disagreed and ruled his statements were voluntary.

Abu Ali, who was born in Texas and lived in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, Virginia, was arrested in June 2003 while studying at a Saudi university and was held in Saudi custody for 20 months before being returned to the United States after being indicted.

In Saudi Arabia, he signed confessions and made statements admitting to the plot against Bush and to having ties to an al Qaeda cell.

……The appeals court agreed with the trial judge’s finding that Abu Ali was not tortured, abused, threatened, held in cruel conditions or subjected to coercive interrogations.

……”Abu Ali was part of a dangerous al Qaeda cell that sought to carry out attacks against — and within — the United States, and we are pleased that the appellate court affirmed this important conviction on every count,” said U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg.

……”He joined an al Qaeda terrorist cell in Saudi Arabia in order to engage in jihad against the United States. He plotted to assassinate the president of the United States and other officials, to hijack and destroy American planes and to attack nuclear power stations in the United States,” the court said.

Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0643022620080606?sp=true

What makes this all the more infuriating is that not only does our “friend” Saudi Arabia breed and fund terrorists, but this suckwad went there for the purpose of completing his ‘transformation’ to Islam.

The arrest of Abu Ali in Saudi Arabia was nothing less than a dog and pony camel show.

Our “Friends” the Saudis and Terrorist Connections

DOBOJ, Bosnia - For years, Saudi Arabia flatly denied it had provided money and logistical support for Islamist militant groups that attacked Western targets.

But that assertion is disputed by a former al-Qaeda commander who testified in a United Nations war-crimes trial that his unit was funded by the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Ali Ahmed Ali Hamad, the former al-Qaeda fighter, gave the same account to The Inquirer in an interview in this struggling city in the central Balkans.

……He contends that the Saudi High Commission, an agency of the Saudi government, and other Islamist charities supported al-Qaeda-led units that committed atrocities. Mujaheddin units, he said, recruited fighters, prepared for battle, and financed their operations in the Balkans.

He said the Saudi High Commission had poured tens of millions of dollars into mujaheddin units led by al-Qaeda operatives who fought with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

……The charities also provided false identification, employment papers, diplomatic plates and vehicles that permitted Islamist fighters to enter the country and pass easily through military checkpoints, Hamad said.

Link: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/breaking/news_breaking/20080531_A_former_al-Qaeda_fighter_accuses_a_Saudi_charity.html

Say it ain’t so.

The Saudi government has been the principal financial backer of Afghanistan’ s odious Taliban movement since at least 1996. It has also channeled funds to Hamas and other groups that have committed terrorist acts in Israel and other portions of the Middle East.

Worst of all, the Saudi monarchy has funded dubious schools and “charities” throughout the Islamic world. Those organizations have been hotbeds of anti-Western, and especially, anti-American, indoctrination. The schools, for example, not only indoctrinate students in a virulent and extreme form of Islam, but also teach them to hate secular Western values.

They are also taught that the United States is the center of infidel power in the world and is the enemy of Islam. Graduates of those schools are frequently recruits for Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda terror network as well as other extremist groups.

Link: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3841

Saudi Arabia not only finances the Islamic war against the West, but provides ideological indoctrination of the minions that carry it out.

We should have bombed them first.

Mohammad’s Home Bulldozed for Public Toilets

What a fitting replacement!

From a review of Steve Coll’s book, “The Bin Ladens’: An Arabian Family in the American Century,” by Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer:

What’s most striking about Coll’s book is its undidactic but unflinching account of just how rancidly dysfunctional the Saudi royals’ governance has been and of how the Bin Ladens — canny, but in so many essential ways incompetent — have benefited from their patrons’ venality through a breathtakingly supine sycophancy and simply bribery. Corrupt, hypocritical, frightened and inept at everything but self-preservation, the Sauds have essentially looted their country’s foreign-developed oil riches, using the Bin Ladens to dole out development only when it was absolutely necessary to placate a restive populace.

The results have been particularly appalling in the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina, where Saudi-financed construction projects undertaken by the Bin Ladens essentially have eradicated the historic pilgrimage sites. Not too many years ago, the remains of the Prophet Mohammed’s house in Mecca were bulldozed to construct a public toilet. These projects not only allow the Saudis to profit more from the hajj, which religious Muslims are obliged to make at least once, but also have imposed a Wahabi straitjacket on the pilgrimage. Formerly, Shia and sufic pilgrims observed the hajj with all sorts of individual rituals and visits to shrines and tombs they referred. Now, thanks to the Bin Ladens’ demolition and construction projects only a Wahabi version of the pilgrimage is possible.

Rutten goes on to discuss Coll’s historical facts surrounding the radicalization of Osama Bin Laden:

Coll reports that it occurred while he was attending an elite high school in Jeddah and came under the profound influence of an Egyptian instructor, who was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Osama apparently joined the brotherhood as a teenager. Given the way he ultimately turned on the Sauds, it’s ironic that the teacher was one of a large number of Egyptian and Syrian exiles to whom the Saudi royal family had given shelter, believing that their religious ideology might be used as a counterweight to the secularism of Nasser and the Baathists.

Link: http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-rutten1apr01,0,5659249.story

I cannot stand the Saudis any more than the other Islamic excrement in the Middle East, but I love the way they conveniently exploit Bin Laden’s wealth to protect their swarthy asses from a potential coup.

Camel Jockeys Hold Beauty Contests…for Their Camels

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — “It’s just like judging a beautiful girl,” said Fowzan al-Madr, a camel breeder from the Kharj region southeast of Riyadh. “You look for big eyes, long lashes and a long neck — maybe 39 or 40 inches.”

As he spoke, Madr was surveying the offerings at Saudi Arabia’s largest camel market, on the outskirts of Riyadh.

The days are long past when camels were crucial to life, a chapter lost in increasing urbanization and technology. But there is still pleasure in raising them, sometimes for milk and meat, for racing and, yes, for their beauty.

Camel beauty pageants, in which camels are judged on their looks and dressage, are held all over Saudi Arabia. They have become so popular in recent years that a respected Saudi cleric recently issued a decree against them, saying that they encouraged pride.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004287020_camels17.html

I bet they had a ‘wet hump’ contest too. Or the best looking ‘girlfriend’….or …oh, stop me.

More Misogyny From the ‘Peaceful Religion of Islam’

An American businesswoman is fearing for her life after she was arrested for having a coffee with a male workmate in a Starbucks in Saudi Arabia.Yara, a 37-year-old mother-of-three, said she was strip searched and forced to sign false confessions while in custody. A judge then told her she would “burn in hell” before she was released on Feb 4.

She has also been publicly denounced by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which said her actions violated the country’s sharia law.

A statement posted on the commission’s website said: “It’s not allowed for any woman to travel alone and sit with a strange man and talk and laugh and drink coffee together like they are married.

“All of these are against the law and it’s clear it’s against the law. First, for a woman to work with men is against the law and against religion. Second, the family sections at coffee shops and restaurants are meant for families and close relatives.”
Her husband, who has refused to release the family’s name for fear of reprisals, told the Times that their lives were now in danger. “We are afraid for our lives, for our family and from further harassment,” he said.

“The things that they are suggesting about my wife, of course it isn’t true. She’s a professional businesswoman and she was at a café, not at a bar. They are coming up with ways to justify their actions.”

First of all, Yara had to know  before she stepped one foot in Saudia Arabia, that it’s a cesspool of Islamic oppression, especially with regard to the treatment of women.

The commission has denied that Yara was strip-searched or forced to sign confessions. It accused her of wearing make-up, not covering her hair and moving around suspiciously while sitting with her Syrian colleague, who was also arrested but later released.

In other words, doing what normal women do in normal societies.

Human rights groups have condemned her arrest, which has also sparked fierce debate within the country.

Yeah, but not a peep out of N.O.W., the U.N., Amnesty International, or the ACLU.

Yara’s family are considering returning to live in America.

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/20/wcoffee120.xml

Yep, that might be a good idea…..