No one knows what happened to King Saud's daughter, who demanded reforms in the regime. I could be under house arrest by order of Bin Salman
Beech from Jordan, the princess who has put the Emir of Dubai in check
Your website doesn't work anymore. Their social media profiles were frozen months ago, as if time had suspended their last words. Princess Basmah bint Saud bin Abdelaziz Al Saud (55), a leading member of the Saudi royal family who for years spoke without fear and called for reforms, has evaporated. The sources consulted by LOC trying to clarify his whereabouts respond with an interrogation. No one knows what happened to King Saud's little daughter , who ruled the country between 1953 and 1964 and had more than a hundred children.
"It's getting more complicated to have real information," an activist slips. The reply is repeated when asked about the Basmah trail , which until a year ago was a well-known face in the West, which had defended the rights of the female population in the confines of the ultraconservative kingdom.
"We have heard information about his arrest and we believe they are true but we have not been able to verify the news or obtain any more concrete information," they point out to this supplement from ALQST, an organization based in London to monitor the rights situation humans in the country led by King Salman (84) and his son, Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (34).
His lawyer, Leonard Bennett, based in the United States, also has not responded to requests for information made by this supplement. In his latest public statements, granted to German television Deutsche Welle , Bennett explained that he lost contact last year, months after Saudi authorities denied him the possibility of traveling outside the country to receive medical assistance in Switzerland. The lawyer had managed the permits for the princess's plane to depart from Jeddah, the Saudi city on the shores of the Red Sea, on December 18, 2018 to Geneva and stop in Turkey. That day, after obtaining the green light, the device remained on the ground. Unexpectedly the princess saw her journey frustrated. The last information of his whereabouts is dated two months later. Since then, Bennett says Basmah stopped responding. "No one knew where he was. We feared the worst," he says. The string of attempts to restore communication ended up paying off. "It appeared but it sounded like it was a hostage, " admits the lawyer.
All indications suggest that Basmah remains under house arrest although the reasons for the punishment are unknown. Since 2006 the princess wrote in local and international media about Saudi reality. After the revolts that toured the Arab world in 2011, he faced censorship in the Saudi press . In his columns, he was against the moral police - now diminished in power - who guarded the streets of the kingdom in search of "vices" and gender segregation in public space and defended the freedom to wear the veil and abaya ( the tunic that the Saudis put on their clothes). He anticipated, thus, reforms that have been implemented in recent years. Transmogrified in a militant and moderate voice, Basmah also censored the figure of mahram , the male guardian who continues to control women's movements and decision-making, such as studying, accessing health care or getting married. In his public appearances he demanded changes in the Constitution and in laws such as divorce.
Fallen today, Basmah served as ambassador for those who demanded reforms in the Saudi kingdom. Some champions who, despite the openness now led by Bin Salman , have been silenced. From the feminists who fought to achieve the right to drive to members of the royal family considered competitors of the call to inherit the throne or able to publicly reveal the dirty rags of a royal family with more than 14,000 members.
Basmah, the result of Saud's marriage to Syria Jamila Merhi, grew up in Beirut, the cosmopolitan capital of Lebanon until the outbreak of the civil war in 1975 forced his family to seek refuge in the United Kingdom. His highness studied English Medicine, Psychology and Literature at the Arab University of Beirut. In the late 1980s he married a Saudi, a member of the Al Sharif family. The couple, who had five children, ended up divorcing in 2007.
SMOKING AND WITHOUT VELO
Since the breakup, Basmah alternated his stays in London with his awkward presence in Saudi Arabia. He established a restaurant chain and a media consultant in the kingdom and dedicated his efforts to the field of humanitarian aid . In 2013 he reported an attempt to blackmail an audiovisual material stolen from his computer in which he appeared smoking and throwing a kiss without wearing a veil. Two years later, the princess closed her businesses in London and moved to Jeddah, where she was reducing media appearances in which she always threw darts at the Government preventing criticism from reaching the court. In one of his last interviews, he called for an end to the war in Yemen, aggravated by the Saudi bombings inaugurated five years ago. His presence was completely undone last March. "He is under house arrest," Ali al Ahmed , a Saudi opponent exiled in the United States who personally met the princess, confirms to this supplement. "The simplest explanation to understand her current state is that she thought she could speak. And Bin Salman silenced her voice," he adds.
Sources close to Basmah cited by the German channel point out that one of the causes of his sudden deprivation of liberty could be a court case opened last year against his children for the assault on a traffic policeman or a family dispute. Others support Al Ahmed's thesis and point to Bin Salman as the warden of his mutism. "It seems they wanted to limit their movements because of the fear that, on a trip abroad, they could say something else," argues Bennett. "If you have seen your previous statements, you have been an advocate for women's rights but nothing else," he concludes.
According to the criteria of
Know more
Comments
This news has no comments yet
Be the first in give your opinion
0 comments