PRESS RELEASE
Frantic Saudis Threaten UN over Yemen Child Deaths Report; Make Lying Claim They Are Stopping Jihadi Funding
June 10, 2016 (EIRNS)—Officials from Saudi Arabia stepped up their efforts this week to stop the public from knowing about their record as terror sponsors and killers of children in the Yemen war.
As pressure increases on the United States to declassify documents related to the 9/11 attacks—especially after the May 24 hearing chaired by Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tex.) that exposed the Saudi hand in terror financing, the Saudis are frantic to stop the flood of exposes of their decades-long filthy role.
In one attempt, the Saudi government staged a press briefing, June 8, via conference call from Riyadh to construct an anti-terror record. Major General Mansour Al-Turki, a spokesman for the Saudi Interior Ministry said the Saudi government has frozen 117 bank accounts suspected of transferring money to terrorist groups and has prosecuted 240 individuals on charges related to funding terrorism, reported The Hill. The briefing was an attempt to prevent the June 9 House hearing, "Stopping the Money Flow" to terrorists from becoming a repeat of the May 24 indictment of the Saudi role in the House hearing.
Then in an open thug attack, the Saudi government threatened and blackmailed the UN, forcing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to admit that "his decision to remove the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen from the organization’s blacklist came after threats," reported RT today.
Ban took out a reference to the Saudi-created coalition behind the war in Yemen from the report, "Children and Armed Conflict," which had said that 60% of the children killed in Yemen (about 750, with more than 1,100 more injured) had been killed by Saudi forces, reported RT. Ban said that the removal was temporary, pending a review by a UN and Saudi committee, and it was "one of the most painful and difficult decisions" he has made, but he did it to prevent "the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously." This is a sidewise reference to the Saudi threat to stop its funding of UN relief programs.
According to Foreign Policy, senior Saudi diplomats, including Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir, had warned UN officials that Riyadh would stop funding parts of the UN. RT added to this picture citing a Reuters report that
"there was a threat of clerics in Riyadh meeting to issue a fatwa against the UN, declaring it anti-Muslim, which would mean no contacts of OIC [Organisation of Islamic Cooperation] members, no relations, contributions, support, to any UN projects [or] programs."
As reported earlier, the Saudis threatened to sell off the Kingdom’s US Treasury holdings if the JASTA bill was passed. Next week, Saudi Defense Minister and de facto Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (son of the allegedly semi-incapacitated King) is coming to Washington to shore up Saudi positioning.
