THE decision Thursday by a Washington court to throw out civil legal actions against the Saudi High Commission for Relief as well as the commission’s president, Riyadh Governor Prince Salman and against Interior Minister Prince Naif, both known for their philanthropic and humanitarian work, is as welcome as it is overdue. They had all been joined with some 200 other defendants in a suit brought by 3,000 plaintiffs including family members of those murdered in the 9/11 atrocities. The agony of these victims has been exploited by people who wish to find any and every opportunity to attack Saudi Arabia on the basis that the majority of the 9/11 attackers were Saudi nationals. It matters not that the Saudi government and its people feel and have often expressed deep disgust and shame at the involvement of these individuals in this wicked crime. There remains a hard core of neoconservative and Zionist bigots circling around the Bush administration intent on stoking up trouble in the relations between the Kingdom and the United States.
That a leading charity such as the Saudi High Commission for Relief, which has been deeply involved in the work of reconstruction in Bosnia-Herzegovina, should become a target of these smear attacks is particularly reprehensible. The commission was founded in 1993 by Prince Salman and has reportedly spent more than $600 million on mosques, schools, cultural centers and orphanages in the devastated country. While, however, this generous work is well-known to the people of Bosnia Herzegovina, the commission makes no attempt to publicize its munificence. Thus a proper modesty in helping a guiltless people rebuild their shattered lives after years of murderous Serbian aggression is manipulated by those who wish the Kingdom ill. This underhanded behavior is the worse since it has leveraged the anguish of those who lost family and loved ones in the 9/11 tragedy, to try and blacken the reputation of an important charity and the names of two distinguished Saudis.
Fortunately, on this occasion, the US court system has been alert to the injustice being perpetrated and has stopped any further action against the Saudi High Commission for Relief and Prince Naif and Prince Salman. There was a similar calumny last year when the French magazine Paris Match accused the then Saudi ambassador to the UK, now to Washington, Prince Turki Al-Faisal of actually funding the 9/11 attacks. Prince Turki sued for libel in the British courts and the magazine agreed to pay substantial damages and apologized completely for the falsehood.
What is disappointing however is the failure of the US and UK governments to counter such campaigns of vilification. It would of course be quite wrong for any government to interfere in the judicial process, even if a case launched was malicious. However, the silence of both Washington and London on the general principle of the Saudi commitment to the war on terror and the profound horror its government and people feel at all Al-Qaeda depravities, of which 9/11 was only the most depraved, is disheartening.
