Stephen Schwartz, writing for the Daily Standard, on June 7th said the Senator Arlen Specter has taken action that may ultimately improve the state of Saudi-American relations by introducing the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act of 2005. The bill, co-sponsored by Senators Evan Bayh, Susan Collins, Tim Johnson, Patty Murray, Russ Feingold, and Ron Wyden may ultimately change Saudi behaviors as recommended by the 9-11 Commission, Freedom House, and the U. S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

According to Schwartz:

The legislation is concise. The bill’s text stands as an indictment of Saudi Arabia, since it is mainly an inventory of evidence against the kingdom and the role of its rulers in enabling terrorism. S.1171 summons the rulers of the Saudi kingdom to comply with United Nations resolution 1373, calling on states to refrain from supporting terrorism, to combat terrorism, and to deny safe haven to financiers and planners of terrorism. As the home of Wahhabism, the state [sponsored] cult and Islamist ideology underpinning al Qaeda and its allies, Saudi territory is a rich field of targets for serious counter-terrorism.

S. 1171 points out that the Council of Foreign Relations concluded almost three years ago that Saudi Arabia is the main source of al Qaeda backing and that Saudi officials have refused to take serious action to end it. A year ago the CFR emphasized, in language incorporated in the bill, that not a single Saudi funder of terrorism has been arrested, tried, or otherwise “publicly punished.”

In spite of the fact that the Senate’s action is overdue, progress even in measured steps is to be applauded. There is no doubt that the Saudi government has been playing both sides of the terrorist aisle for much too long, and the world community, much less the United States, has failed to hold the Saudis accountable for their diabolical, pro-Islamic behavior. What behavior?

Paul Marshal, writing for today’s Weekly Standard reports that the Saudis continue their serious abuses of any individuals who are not practicing Muslims. While the Crown Prince is out of the country making cozy with American officials, Saudi Religious Police have begun a crackdown against violations of Saudi religious law. In particular:

Saudis have arrested eight Christians from India and seized documents naming others. One of those arrested, Chittirical John Thomas, was pulled away from work and beaten in front of his five-year-old son. He is reportedly in the Shemaissy Detention Center.

This followed the March 22 arrest in the Batha area of Riyadh of Indian pastor Samkutty Varghese by the religious police, the muttawa, for not ending a cell phone conversation when the call for Muslim prayer went out. Rev. Varghese, who went to Saudi Arabia as a tourist in January, was apparently not aware of rules forbidding calls at such times. He is still being held, and there are reports that he has been sentenced to ten months in prison, as well as to a flogging.

The muttawa were unusually busy while Crown Prince Abdullah was away in Texas visiting President Bush. On April 23, they arrested 40 Pakistani Christians who were engaged in a joint Catholic-Protestant meeting in a home. On April 29, they arrested five Christians from an Ethiopian and Eritrean group who had gathered for prayer.

Sources in Saudi Arabia believe that authorities there are using the information they have gathered from these raids in order to organize crackdowns elsewhere in the country. Saudi security officials are busily arresting people whose phone numbers were found in Rev. Varghese’s diary.

Despite the Saudis’ expressions of concern over press reports that U.S. officials at Guantanamo Bay desecrated Korans, their own security authorities have destroyed Bibles found among the victims’ possessions, just as they destroyed religious artifacts found in a raid on a makeshift Hindu shrine found in an apartment in Riyadh on March 24.

It is not only appropriate that the United States government begin to hold the Saudis accountable for state-sponsored and financed terrorist activities, it is also appropriate that we demand that all US officials halt their stomach-turning relationships with the Saudi royal family, including the President who publicly denounced state-sponsored terrorism as being in direct opposition to official US policy.

What we have to ask is this: following passage of the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act, will the Senate take more direct measures to rid Saudi sponsored terrorist organizations from the United States? Perhaps this is a question that each reader should address directly to their own congressional representatives — it only costs 37-cents.

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