When I saw that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was berating the British government for failing to heed warnings about the 7/7 bombings on London in advance of his state visit to Britain, I had a sense of déjà vu.
In August 2005, just a month after the terrorist attacks had left 56 dead, I was put in contact with an official at the Saudi embassy who said he had some important information concerning the attacks. Like King Abdullah two years later, he told me that the plot could have been dismantled had the British security services reacted to Saudi warnings of an imminent threat.
The information he provided me with was detailed, including the names of senior al-Qaeda members allegedly involved in the plot. The Saudis claimed they had intercepted calls from Kareem al-Majati, a prominent leader of al-Qaeda in the Gulf, and were investigating the possibility that he had been in direct contact with the leader of the British terror cell, Mohammad Sidique Khan.
Majati was originally from Morocco and at the time was thought to have masterminded the May 2003 attacks on Casablanca and helped organise the March 2004 Madrid bombing. He was killed in a shootout with Saudi police in April 2005. The Saudi official said calls from a second al-Qaeda operative, Younes al-Hayari, had also been traced to Britain.
The Saudi ambassador at the time, Prince Turki al-Faisal, even issued a statement: “There was certainly close liaison between the Saudi Arabian intelligence authorities and the British intelligence authorities some months ago, when information was passed to Britain about a heightened terrorist threat to London.”
In the maelstrom of speculation around the 7/7 bombings, the story briefly fizzled and then died. Until this week, that is, when King Abdullah, in a piece of spectacular diplomatic discourtesy, decided to return to the subject.
The Saudi state visit has been a miserable experience for the British government and it is to the immense credit of the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, that he put the adoption of his second child before meeting the leader of the most morally repugnant regime on earth. Much has been made – and quite rightly – of the human rights abuses carried out in the name of a cruelly perverted version of Islam. One beneficial outcome of the visit is that it has allowed campaigners to highlight the state-sanctioned torture, beheadings and religious persecution carried out by the Saudi government.
But King Abdullah’s crass intervention has also revealed a great- er truth about the relationship between Britain and Saudi Arabia, often described in a lazy piece of diplomatic shorthand as a “partner in the war on terror”. If these two governments failed to co-operate in the months running up to 7 July 2005, then what exactly is the point of this relationship? The answer, of course, is that Britain’s close ties with Saudi Arabia are predicated not on the battle against al-Qaeda, but on a series of highly lucrative arms deals, the first of which was signed by Margaret Thatcher in 1985. The latest of these, signed in August of last year, sold 72 Eurofighter Typhoons to the Saudis. It is estimated that the deals have brought over £40bn to the UK economy, mainly through the defence contractor BAE Systems and its predecessor British Aerospace.
This is just the latest example of the British government peddling the mendacious propaganda about “shared interests” with Saudi Arabia in the war against terror, despite scant evidence of a working relationship.
Last December, when the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, announced that a Serious Fraud Office investigation into allegations of bribery surrounding the BAE systems arms deals was being dropped, the then prime minister again invoked security issues. “Our relationship with Saudi Arabia is vitally important for our country in terms of counter-terrorism, in terms of the broader Middle East, in terms of helping in respect of Israel and Palestine,” he said. “That strategic interest comes first.”
The level of self-delusion contained in Tony Blair’s statement was staggering. Now King Abdullah himself has blown a hole in the argument that British-Saudi relations are bolstered by the close links of our countries’ security services.
I do not know the truth of the Saudi claims I first reported over two years ago. There is no way of telling. However, it is interesting that the line taken by Whitehall sources quoted in the press has now shifted. In 2005 I was told the British security apparatus “did not recognise” the intelligence referred to by the Saudis. Yet the response now, to Abdullah’s comments, is that the information was too vague to act on, which is a quite different matter.
Those who know more than I about the true nature of the Saudi regime have pointed to the gross hypocrisy contained in the comments. As the academic Malise Ruthven, author of Islam in the World, wrote in the Independent on 30 October: “King Abdullah’s complaint that British authorities ignored Saudi warnings of an imminent attack on the UK before the atrocities of 7 July 2005 might be more convincing if they came from the ruler of a country less sympathetic to the Islamist agenda.” This is why the new report into Islamist hate literature in Britain’s mosques is so vital. Published by the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange, The Highjacking of British Islam has discovered books advocating the stoning of adulterers, the burning of homosexuals and the beheading of “apostates” who turn away from Islam. Much of the material was traced to agencies of the Saudi government.
This is the reality of Britain’s “shared interests” with Saudi Arabia: we give them weapons to bolster their vicious regime and in return we get the literature of intolerance designed to encourage another generation to wage jihad.
Content from our partners
Related
