Obama’s Friend No. 2: Saudi King Salman Executes 47, Including a Leading Shi’a Cleric

Following Saudi Arabia’s barbaric mass executions on Jan. 2, which have outraged the world, it is now time for the contents of the Congressional Inquiry’s 28 secret pages to come to the floor of the U.S. Senate and House, ending the U.S. alliance with the al-Saud monarchy. Barack Obama, who ignored the mass memorial march of world leaders in the streets of Paris last January, in order to appear personally at Saudi King Salman’s coronation, must be thrown out with it.

Neither Obama nor Britain’s David Cameron have said anything about the execution of a leading Shi’a cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, and 46 other prisoners. The Obama Administration made no attempt to warn the Saudi monarchy before it executed Sheikh al-Nimr.

After the mass executions, with protests spreading in East Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and the Saudi Embassy in Tehran burned, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby only said that the executions “tended to increase tensions when they should be being reduced,” and urged Obama’s Saudi friends “to respect and protect human rights, and to ensure fair and transparent judicial proceedings in all cases.” As for Cameron, one month ago he very uncomfortably told an ITV interviewer that “we depend on the Saudis for critical intelligence and security information, and that’s the reason” Britain had pushed for Saudi Arabia to be head of the UN Human Rights Council!

The “28 pages” will make clear the Saudi role in helping the al-Qaeda terrorists strike the United States on Sept 11, 2001. Unless these pages are made public, the Saudi-backed terrorism will continue to kill wherever and whenever. It is not accidental, for example, that following a year of brutal, Saudi-led bombing attacks on Yemen, reports have emerged today that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is trying to take the Yemeni port city of Aden.

Sheikh Nimr was an advocate of non-violence, in contrast to the violent killers in King Salman’s monarchy. His execution has once again proven the close relationship between ISIS and King Salman, since ISIS, which practices the same violent Islamic doctrine, Wahaabism, that Salman practices, also are involved in eliminating all Shi’as. Sheikh Nimr spent years as a scholar in Tehran and Syria and was a revered Shi’a leader of Friday prayers in the Saudi Eastern Province. He stayed clear of political parties but demanded free elections.

The London Independent reported Sunday that Peter Tatchell, a leading campaigner of the human rights group Reprieve, reproached Cameron, saying the UK “must not turn a blind eye to such atrocities and must urgently appeal to the kingdom to change course. The UK Government’s stance on Saudi Arabia was completely immoral.”