Editorial of the “World”. Saudi Arabia is holding its rank in terms of death. The one who places it alongside the worst executor states of the planet, Iran and China. The kingdom of de facto by the Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Salman announced, Saturday, March 12, having killed in one day 81 sentenced to death, an unprecedented figure in the recent history of the giant of the Arabian Peninsula.
You have to go back more than forty years back to find a comparable mass execution in 1980 in very different circumstances. The self-proclaimed dynasty guardians of the holy places of Islam had been shaken, a few months earlier, by taking the Great Mosque of Mecca by a jihadist commando. Sixty-three insurgents had been executed.
The released release to announce this decimation ensured that the death sentences had been able to have the rights recognized by the Saudi judicial system. It is permitted or advised to doubt it. Opacity is the rule, as did dozens of arbitrary arrests have been shown since the Crown Prince has reinforced, from 2015, his hold on a kingdom previously collegiate. One year after his arrival in power, 43 Saudi had already been executed in one day, including the Nimr al-Nimr Dissident Shiite religious.
Franching cubits
No one knows exactly what was criticized for men spent by arms, “sentenced for various crimes, including the murder of innocent men, women and children”, according to the official statement. Saudi power has involved affiliations to “terrorist organizations” as Al-Qaida, the Islamic State Organization or the Houthist Yemeni Rebellion.
But the credibility of the authorities is weak, since the name of Mohammed Ben Salman, aka “MBS”, has been associated with the execution and dismemberment in 2018 of a dissent, Jamal Khashoggi, perpetrated in the Saudi Consulate In Istanbul, Turkey. Against obviousness, the prince continues to deny any responsibility, as he still did In an interview published on March 3 by the American magazine The Atlantic.
We remember that the Saudi subordinates thrown into a grazing after this appalling assassination had been initially sentenced to the death penalty, before it is commuted to lifetime prison, always in the greatest opacity. “The world must already know that when Mohammed Ben Salman promises reforms, the blood flows as a result,” said the British human rights NGO summarized.
The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army and the explosion of the price of the hydrocarbons gives, it is true, the frank cubits to Mohammed Ben Salman. While the President of the United States, Joe Biden, so far refused to deal directly with him, the Crown Prince certainly took note of the very recent rapprochement between the United States and Venezuela of Nicolas Maduro. Washington, however, swore the loss of the latter when Donald Trump occupied the oval office.
Unlike Venezuela, ruined by twenty years of Chavism, Saudi Arabia is one of the few oil producers capable of playing shock absorbers in global markets, because of its ability to quickly increase its oil production. The temptation of Westerners is probably strong to reconnect with Riyadh on behalf of the containment of Russia. But where would the consistency of getting along with a manager who, after raining his bombs on Yemen, keeps his executioners as busy?