U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) condemned alleged Saudi torture of aid worker Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, arrested in March 2018, charged with treason and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Al-Sadhan worked in the Riyadh Red Crescent Service before arrested by Saudi authorities for sympathies to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] and storing data on his compute that compromised public order and religious values. Reports of al-Sadham’s torture with electric shock, beatings, flogging, hanging from the feet, placed in stress positions, humiliation and death threats, left Pelosi no choice but to urge the State Department to raise objections. Pelosi raised objections Oct. 2, 2018 when Washington Post Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi disappeared at the Saudi Embassin in Istanbul, allegedly dismembered by a 15-man hit squad dispatched by Saudi defacto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Khashoggi’s gruesome murder by an organized Saudi hit squad left the world aghast by the world’s biggest oil supplier, a longstanding ally of the United States. Democrats in Congress at the time of Khashoggi’s death demanded that former President Donald Trump halt billion-plus dollar military sales to the Kingdom, even break off diplomatic relations. Whatever the accusation on Bin Salman, Trump wasn’t going to jeopardize U.S. arms sales to the Kingdom, a age-old ally and customer of the U.S. Defense Department. Khashoggi’s murder tugged at the heartstrings of the journalistic community, knowing one of their own was tortured, murdered and cut into little pieces by a surgical bone saw. Journalists remember the Feb. 1, 2002 beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, whose nauseating death was videotaped and disseminated for public consumption.
Whatever brutality the world saw after the ISIS take over of Iraq and Syria, when the late ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his caliphate June 30, 2014, the Saudis routinely perform amputations and beheadings in the public square for various kinds of c rimes against the Saudi Kingdom. Bin Salman has been a particularly brutal leader, offering no apologies and only denials, especially in Khashoggi’s case because it involved a Washington Post journalist. Pelosi’s recent revulsion for reports of al-Sadhan’s mistreatment in Saudi custody opens up a can of worms about what really goes on daily inside the Kingdom. President Joe Biden has been feuding with Russia and China since taking office, citing human rights abuses with 44-year-old Russian dissident Alexi Navalny and alleged genocide by Beijing of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang province. Now Pelosi wants sanctions against the Kingdom.
Biden has, as commander-in-chief, to pick his battles wisely, not alienating important U.S. adversaries and allies alike. If Biden, or in the past Trump, listened to Pelosi, the U.S. would have no cooperation with adversaries or traditional allies. Saudi’s internal ways of dealing with criminals, terrorists or petty criminals is an internal matter, not one subject to scrutiny by the U.S. press. Whatever happened to Khashoggi at Saudi’s Instanbul embassy, the U.S. can’t suddenly break off diplomatic relations with the Kingdom, when the Saudi government has been a close partner in fighting terror since Sept. 11, 2001. Whether 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 terrorists hailed from Saudi Arabia or not, the U.S. can’t take terrorist actions out on sovereign states because U.S. intel agencies were asleep at the switch. Saudi Arabia has been a staunch ally of the United States since before WW II.
Pelosi woke up to concerns that the Kingdom denies the U.S. Bill of Rights to its citizens. “Deeply concerned with allegations of torture in detention of aid worker Abdulrahman al-Sadhan. His sentencing continues Saudi Arabia’s assault on freedom of expression, Pelosi said. His sentencing continues Saudi Arabia’s assault on the freedom of expression,” Pelosi said. Where was Pelosi when the U.S. routinely practiced “enhance interrogation techniques” in U.S. military-controlled Iraq-based Abu Gharaib prison or Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In both settings, the Bush administration routinely “tortured” prisoners, calling the actions necessary “enhanced interrogation techniques,” practiced for the noble purpose by the Bush administration of extracting actionable intelligence out of battlefield detainees. Bush claimed the Geneva Convention didn’t apply because the prisoners did not fight for sovereign states.
Pelosi’s misplaced concerns about what goes on internally in Saudi Arabia’s administration of justice shows why the Biden has made such a mess out U.S. foreign policy. “We are very worried about my brother’s safety & health, deteriorating under torture in Saudi detention, while we remain completely deprived of any contact with him,” said Areej al-Sadhan, al Sadhan’s sister wrote on Twitter. But whatever happens behind closed doors in Saudi Arabia, Russia, China or any other country, the U.S. certainly didn’t share to the world what happened in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Gharaib or any other CIA black site. Pelosi’s concerns about Saudi human rights abuses should be kept away from the media where the press sensationalizes every human rights abuse outside the United States. Biden officials have been quick to condemn U.S. enemies without looking at what happens at home.
