JEDDAH, 27 December — Prince Majed ibn Abdul Aziz has expressed his disgust at the recent lies concocted by an American newspaper, The Kansas City Star, about him in a story saying he was one of six Saudi members of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan who had been arrested.
In a telephone interview with Okaz newspaper from his residence in Vienna, where he arrived on Sunday from Florida to convalesce after a liver transplant, Prince Majed said that the report was part of a deliberate attempt to denigrate Islam and Arabs.
"They are reporting without bothering to verify facts in a way that is totally irresponsible," he added.
Describing his impression of New York when he arrived there on Sept. 23, the prince said: "When I came to New York 12 days after the terror attacks, it was nearly empty. People were preoccupied with the new developments. New York was not the same city we had always been familiar with. On the second day after my arrival, my medical investigations started. On Oct. 8, I was operated on. I was almost not in touch with the events outside because of the surgery. Neither myself nor anyone accompanying me experienced any difficulty. Indeed, we were treated with sympathy and hospitality. Such a treatment, of course, was not motivated by pure humane feeling — let’s face it, I was a client who had money."
Regarding his treatment, the prince said in three more months his health will be back to normal and he should be back home by March.
Meanwhile, Deputy Governor of Riyadh, Prince Sattam, had also strongly denied the reports about Prince Majed carried by The Kansas City Star on Friday.
