KEYSTONE SAUDIS

Brian Whitaker describes the problem of catching terrorists in Saudi Arabia — or rather
not catching them — in a London Guardian report headlined “Paying the price for
incompetence.” Think of it as the Keystone Kops, Saudi-style.
What “often happens in the kingdom,” he writes, “[is] a case of the police stumbling on a plot by
accident rather than through smart detective work.” The interior ministry, which is responsible for
catching terrorists and which is run on “supposedly Islamic principles,” has
been more occupied policing such offenses as “witchcraft, adultery, sodomy,
highway robbery, sabotage, apostasy (renunciation of Islam) and ‘corruption on earth.'”

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