Princess, More Tears to Cry, page 31
A nephew of King Fahd falsely accuses one of his employees of witchcraft. The employee, Abdul-Karim Naqshabandi, is executed.
An ailing King Fahd cedes power to his half-brother Crown Prince Abdullah.
1997 343 Muslim pilgrims die in a fire outside the holy city of Mecca. More than a thousand others are injured.
1998 150 pilgrims die at the “stoning of the devil” ritual during a stampede that occurs on the last day of the annual pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca.
1999 The Saudi Arabian government claims it will issue travel visas into the kingdom to upscale travel groups.
21 August. Members of the royal family are shocked when Prince Faisal bin Fahd, the eldest son of King Fahd, dies of a heart attack, age fifty-four. As head of the Arab Sports Federation, he had just returned from the Arab Games in Jordan.
17 November. A car bomb in Riyadh kills Christopher Rodway, a British technician. In 2001, three Westerners are charged with the bombing.
2001 26 January. A UN panel angers the Saudi government and citizens when it criticizes Saudi Arabia for discriminating against women, harassing minors, and for punishments that include flogging and stoning.
5 March. 35 Muslim pilgrims suffocate to death during the “stoning of the devil” ritual at the annual hajj in Mecca.
March. The Higher Committee for Scientific Research and Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia says that Pokémon games and cards have “possessed the minds” of Saudi children.
September. After 9/11, six chartered flights carrying Saudi nationals depart from the USA. A few days later, another chartered flight carrying twenty-six members of the bin Laden family leaves the USA.
2002 17 February. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah presents a Middle East peace plan to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. The plan includes Arab recognition of Israel’s right to exist if Israel pulls back from lands that were once part of Jordan, including East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
March. There is a fire at a girls’ school in Mecca, but the police block the girls from fleeing the building because they are not wearing the veil. A surge of anger spreads across Saudi Arabia when fifteen students burn to death.
13 April. Saudi Arabian poet Ghazi Al-Gosaibi, Saudi ambassador to Britain, publishes the poem “The Martyrs” in the Saudi daily Al Hayat, praising a Palestinian suicide bomber.
25 April. American president George W. Bush meets with Crown Prince Abdullah, who tells Bush that the United States must reconsider its total support of Israel. Abdullah gives Bush his eight-point proposal for Middle East peace.
April. The Saudi Arabian government closes several factories that produce women’s veils and abayas that are said to violate religious rules. Some of the cloaks are considered too luxurious, with jewels sewn on the shoulders.
May. There is a disagreement between Saudi diplomats and members of the UN Committee Against Torture over whether flogging and the amputation of limbs are violations of the 1987 Convention Against Torture.
December. Saudi dissidents report the launch of a new radio station, Sawt al-Islah (the Voice of Reform), broadcasting from Europe. The new station is formed with the explicit purpose of pushing for reforms in Saudi Arabia.
2003 February. In Mina, Saudi Arabia, fourteen Muslim pilgrims are trampled to death when a worshipper trips during the annual hajj pilgrimage.
29 April. The United States government announces the withdrawal of all combat forces from Saudi Arabia.
12 May. Multiple and simultaneous suicide car bombings at three foreign compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, kill twenty-six people, including nine U.S. citizens.
14 September. Saudi national and marijuana trafficker Dhaher bin Thamer al-Shimry is beheaded; forty-one people have been beheaded by September.
14 October. Hundreds of Saudi Arabians take to the streets, demanding reform. This is the first large-scale protest in the country, as demonstrations are illegal.
Indonesian maid Ati Bt Abeh Inan is accused by her Saudi employer of casting a spell on him and his family and is sentenced to death. After serving ten years in prison, she is pardoned and sent back to West Java.
It is discovered that Libya planned a covert operation to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah.
2004 1 February. During the hajj, 251 Muslim worshippers die in a stampede.
10 April. Popular Saudi Arabian TV host Rania al-Baz is severely beaten by her husband, who thought he had killed her. She survived, suffering severe facial fractures that required twelve operations. She allowed photos to be broadcast and opened discussions about ongoing violence against women in Saudi Arabia. She traveled to France, where she wrote her story. It was reported that she lost custody of her children after her book was published.
May. In Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, suspected militants spray gunfire inside the offices of an oil contractor, the Houston-based ABB Ltd. Six people are killed. Many are wounded. Police kill four brothers in a shoot-out after a car chase in which the attackers reportedly dragged the naked body of one victim behind their getaway car.
6 June. Simon Chambers, thirty-six, an Irish cameraman working for the BBC, is killed in a shooting in Riyadh. A BBC correspondent is injured.
8 June. An American citizen working for a U.S. defense contractor is shot and killed in Riyadh.
12 June. An American is kidnapped in Riyadh. Al Qaeda posts the man’s picture on an Islamic Web site. He is identified as Lockheed Martin businessman Paul M. Johnson Jr. Islamic militants shoot and kill American Kenneth Scroggs in his garage in Riyadh.
13 June. Saudi Arabia holds a three-day “national dialogue” in Medina on how women’s lives could be improved and the recommendations are passed on to Crown Prince Abdullah.
15 June. Al Qaeda threatens to execute Paul M. Johnson Jr. within seventy-two hours unless fellow jihadists are released from Saudi prisons.
18 June. Al Qaeda claims to have killed American hostage Paul M. Johnson Jr. They post photos on the Internet showing his body and severed head.
June. The Saudi parliament passes legislation overturning a law banning girls and women from participating in physical education and sports. In August, the Ministry of Education announces that it will not honor the legislation.
20 July. The head of slain American hostage Paul M. Johnson Jr. is found during a raid by Saudi security forces.
30 July. In the United States, in a Virginia court, Abdurahman Alamoudi pleads guilty to moving cash from Libya to pay expenses in the plot to assassinate Saudi Prince Abdullah.
28 September. The use of mobile phones with built-in cameras is banned by Saudi Arabia’s highest religious authority. The edict claims that the phones are “spreading obscenity” throughout Saudi Arabia.
6 December. Nine people are killed at the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah when Islamic militants throw explosives at the gate of the heavily guarded building. They force their way into the building and a gun battle ensues.
2005 13 January. Saudi judicial officials say a religious court has sentenced fifteen Saudis, including a woman, to as many as 250 lashes each and up to six months in prison for participating in a protest against the monarchy.
10 February. While women are banned from casting ballots, Saudi male voters converge at polling stations in the Riyadh region to participate in city elections. This is the first time in the country’s history that Saudis are taking part in a vote that conforms to international standards.
3 March. Men in eastern and southern Saudi Arabia turn out in the thousands to vote in municipal elections. It is their first opportunity to have a say in decision making in Saudi’s absolute monarchy.
1 April. Saudi Arabia beheads three men in public in the northern city of al-Jawf; in 2003 the three men killed a deputy governor, a religious court judge, and a police lieutenant.
8 May. A Pakistani man is beheaded for attempting to smuggle heroin into the kingdom.
15 May. Three reform advocates are sentenced to terms ranging from six to nine years in prison. Human rights activists call the trial “a farce.”
15 May. Saudi author and poet Ali al-Dimeeni is sentenced to nine years in prison for sowing dissent, disobeying his rulers, and sedition. His 1998 novel A Gray Cloud centers on a dissident jailed for years in a desert nation prison where many others have served time for their political views.
27 May. King Fahd, Saudi Arabia’s monarch for twenty-three years, is hospitalized for unspecified reasons.
1 August. King Fahd dies at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh. His half-brother Crown Prince Abdullah is named to replace him.
8 August. Hope rises in Saudi Arabia after the new king, Abdullah, pardons four prominent activists who were jailed after criticizing the country’s strict religious environment and the slow pace of democratic reform.
15 September. The Saudi government orders a Jeddah chamber of commerce to allow female voters and candidates.
21 September. Two men are beheaded in Riyadh after being convicted of kidnapping and raping a woman.
17 November. A Saudi high school chemistry teacher, accused of discussing religion with his students, is sentenced to 750 lashes and forty months in prison for blasphemy following a trial on 12 November.
27 November. To the delight of Saudi women, two females are elected to a chamber of commerce in Jeddah. This is the first occasion when women have won any such post in the country, as they are largely barred from political life.
8 December. Leaders from fifty Muslim countries promise to fight extremist ideology. The leaders say they will reform textbooks, restrict religious edicts, and crack down on terror financing.
Saudi Arabia enacts a law that bans state employees from making any statements in public that conflict with official policy.
2006 12 January. Thousands of Muslim pilgrims trip over luggage during the hajj, causing a crush in which 363 people are killed.
26 January. Saudi Arabia recalls its ambassador to Denmark in protest at a series of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper. Discontent spreads across the Muslim world for weeks, resulting in dozens of deaths.
19 February. Following the publication of the twelve cartoons of the Prophet—highlighting what it describes as self- censorship—the Jyllands-Posten newspaper prints a full-page apology in a Saudi-owned newspaper.
6 April. Cheese and butter from the Danish company Arla are returned to Saudi Arabian supermarket shelves following a boycott sparked by the country’s publication of offensive cartoons.
April. The Saudi Arabian government announces plans to build an electrified fence along its 560-mile border with Iraq.
16 May. Newspapers in Saudi Arabia report that they have received an order from King Abdullah telling editors to stop publishing pictures of women. The king claims that such photographs will make young Saudi men go astray.
18 August. According to the Financial Times, Great Britain has agreed to a multibillion-dollar defense deal to supply seventy-two Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft to Saudi Arabia.
20 October. In an attempt to defuse internal power struggles, King Abdullah gives new powers to his brothers and nephews. In the future, a council of thirty princes will meet to choose the crown prince.
The kingdom beheaded eighty-three people in 2005 and thirty-five people in 2004.
2007 4 February. A Saudi Arabian judge sentences twenty foreigners to receive lashes and prison terms after convicting them of attending a mixed party where alcohol was served and men and women danced.
17 February. A report published by a U.S. human rights group reveals that the Saudi government detains thousands of prisoners in jail without charge, sentences children to death, and oppresses women.
19 February. A Saudi court orders the bodies of four Sri Lankans to be displayed in a public square after being beheaded for armed robbery.
26 February. Four Frenchmen are killed by gunmen on the side of a desert road leading to the holy city of Medina in an area restricted to Muslims only.
February. Ten Saudi intellectuals are arrested for signing a polite petition suggesting it is time for the kingdom to consider a transition to constitutional monarchy.
27 April. In one of the largest sweeps against terror cells in Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry says police arrested 172 Islamic militants. The militants had trained abroad as pilots so they could duplicate 9/11 and fly aircraft in attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil fields.
5 May. Prince Abdul-Majid bin Abdul-Aziz, the governor of Mecca, dies, age sixty-five, after a long illness.
9 May. An Ethiopian woman convicted of killing an Egyptian man over a dispute is beheaded. Khadija bint Ibrahim Moussa is the second woman to be executed this year. Beheadings are carried out with a sword in a public square.
Nayef al-Shaalan, a Saudi prince, is sentenced in absentia in France to ten years in prison on charges of involvement in a cocaine smuggling gang.
23 June. A Saudi judge postpones the trial of three members of the religious police for their involvement in the death of a man arrested after being seen with a woman who was not his relative.
9 November. Saudi authorities behead Saudi citizen Khalaf al-Anzi in Riyadh for kidnapping and raping a teenager.
Saudi authorities behead a Pakistani for drug trafficking. This execution brings to 131 the number of people beheaded in the kingdom in 2007.
14 November. A Saudi court sentences a nine-year-old girl who had been gang-raped to six months in prison and two hundred lashes. The court also bans her lawyer from defending her, confiscating his license to practice law and summoning him to a disciplinary hearing.
17 December. A gang-rape victim who was sentenced to six months in prison and two hundred lashes for being alone with a man not related to her is pardoned by the Saudi king after the case sparks rare criticism from the United States.
2008 21 January. The newspaper Al-Watan reports that the Interior Ministry issued a circular to hotels asking them to accept lone women as long as their information was sent to a local police station.
14 February. A leading human rights group appeals to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah to stop the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft and performing supernatural acts.
19 May. Teacher Matrook al-Faleh is arrested at King Saud University in Riyadh after he publicly criticized conditions in a prison where two other human rights activists are serving jail terms.
24 May. Saudi authorities behead a local man convicted of armed robbery and raping a woman. The execution brings the number of people beheaded in 2008 to fifty-five.
20 June. Religious police arrest twenty-one allegedly homosexual men and confiscate large amounts of alcohol at a large gathering of young men at a rest house in Qatif.
8 July. A human rights group says domestic workers in Saudi Arabia often suffer abuse that in some cases amounts to slavery, as well as sexual violence and lashings for spurious allegations of theft or witchcraft.
30 July. The country’s Islamic religious police ban the sale of dogs and cats as pets. They also ban owners from walking their pets in public because men use cats and dogs to make passes at women.
11 September. Sheikh Saleh al-Lihedan, Saudi Arabia’s top judiciary official, issues a religious decree saying it is permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV networks who broadcast immoral content. He later adjusts his comments, saying owners who broadcast immoral content should be brought to trial and sentenced to death if other penalties do not deter them.
November. A U.S. diplomatic cable says donors in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates send an estimated $100 million annually to radical Islamic schools in Pakistan that back militancy.
10 December. The European Commission awards the first Chaillot Prize to the Al-Nahda Philanthropic Society for Women, a Saudi charity that helps divorced and underprivileged women.
2009 14 January. Saudi Arabia’s most senior cleric is quoted as saying it is permissible for ten-year-old girls to marry. He adds that anyone who thinks ten-year-old girls are too young to marry is doing those girls an injustice.
14 February. King Abdullah dismisses Sheikh Saleh al-Lihedan. King Abdullah also appoints Nora al-Fayez as deputy minister of women’s education, the first female in the history of Saudi Arabia to hold a ministerial post.
3 March. Khamisa Sawadi, a seventy-five-year-old widow, is sentenced to forty lashes and four months in jail for talking with two young men who are not close relatives.
22 March. A group of Saudi clerics urges the kingdom’s new information minister to ban women from appearing on TV or in newspapers and magazines.
27 March. King Abdullah appoints his half-brother Prince Naif as his second deputy prime minister.
30 April. An eight-year-old girl divorces her middle-aged husband after her father forces her to marry him in exchange for $13,000. Saudi Arabia permits such child marriages.
29 May. A man is beheaded and crucified for slaying an eleven-year-old boy and his father.
6 June. The Saudi film Menahi is screened in Riyadh more than thirty years after the government began shutting down theaters. No women were allowed, only men and children, including girls up to ten.
15 July. Saudi citizen Mazen Abdul-Jawad appears on Lebanon’s LBC satellite TV station’s Bold Red Line program and shocks Saudis by publicly confessing to sexual exploits. More than two hundred Saudi Arabians file legal complaints against Abdul-Jawad, dubbed a “sex braggart” by the media, and many Saudis say he should be severely punished. Abdul-Jawad is convicted by a Saudi court in October 2009 and sentenced to five years in jail and one thousand lashes.
9 August. Italian news agencies report that burglars have stolen jewels and cash worth 11 million euros from the hotel room of a Saudi princess in Sardinia, sparking a diplomatic incident.
