It wasn’t on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s list when he met with Saudi leaders, but maybe it should have been: the Saudi government is quietly spiriting away their citizens accused of crimes in the U.S., helping them skip bail and fly home.
The first case to draw attention, as reported by the Oregonian, was that of Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah, a Saudi community college student charged with manslaughter in hit and run death of a 15-year-old girl. The Saudi government then seems to have helped him escape U.S. authorities using a playbook drawn from a spy-thriller:
The Saudi government posted his bail, whisked him into a black SUV, helped him remove his ankle tracking monitor before handing him a fake passport and helping him board a plane out of the country.
When that story first broke in December, it made international headlines and raised new questions about the interactions of the Saudi government abroad.
It also pushed renewed discussions of just what Washington’s relationship was with the Saudi Kingdom that seemed to place little stake in laws in the wake of the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Now, Noorah’s case seems to have been one in a string of such incidents. In five separate cases in Oregon, Saudi students facing charges for serious crimes including rape, child pornography, and manslaughter, seem to have been helped out of their trouble, not through the courts, but with Saudi money for bail, fake passports, and plane tickets – circumventing the U.S. legal system.
In Canada, another Saudi student, Mohammed Zuraibi al-Zoabi, seems to have been treated to the same Saudi-sponsored escape plan. He faced charges of “sexual assault, assault, forcible confinement, uttering threats, criminal harassment, dangerous driving and assault with a weapon (a vehicle).”
He disappeared, and when contacted by Al Jazeera he said that the trial was likely to be “unfair” adding “everybody’s against me just because I’m a (racial expletive) and foreign student despite the fact that we boosted so much money to that island of Canada.”
In the United States, Sen. Ron Wyden D-Ore., has already asked President Trump, acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to investigate the disappearances.
They should. And given the pattern of behavior and the seemingly well-polished tactics, that investigation should look for similar incidents elsewhere in the country.
That the issue is not limited to just Oregon seems likely given another incident in 2015 where the Saudi consulate paid a $100,000 bail for a man in Utah accused of rape. He was later picked up at the U.S.-Mexican border trying to flee the country.
Ultimately, the task of sorting out Saudi actions falls to both the Department of Justice and the State Department, responsible together for interacting with foreign governments on legal matters. Of course, the first step to that process is contacting the Saudi government about the issue.
Currently, there is no evidence that that has been done or is even under consideration.
Until Washington adds these incidents to its long list of diplomatic concerns with the Saudi government, Riyadh might as well continue helping its citizens skirt U.S. law.
