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:

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