Nasser Al Saeed

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Nasser Al Saeed
Nasser Al-Saeed 1956.jpg
Nasser Al Saeed in 1956
Born1923
NationalitySaudi Arabian
OccupationWriter
Years active?-December 1979
Known forCriticisms against House of Saud
His kidnapping in Beirut in 1979
Founder of the Arabian Peninsula People's Union

Nasser Al Saeed (1923–unknown) was a Saudi Arabian writer and the founder of the Arabian Peninsula People's Union (APPU).[1] He was one of the most significant critics of the Saudi royal family.[2]

Biography[]

Al Saeed was born in 1923[3] and from a family based in Hail.[4] He was employed in Aramco.[5]

Al Saeed involved in protests against the royal establishment in 1947 due to the inefficiency of Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries to end the attempts to establish an Israeli state in the Middle East.[6] The protests became much more intense following the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the recognition of the state by the US which had close ties with Saudi Arabia.[6] His opposition continued in the 1950s through radio broadcast.[1] He was one of the leaders of the strike among Aramco workers in 1953.[3] Following this incident he was put under house arrest in Hail.[4][7] At the end of the same year and in the early days of 1954 Al Saeed and other strike leaders formed the National Reform Front.[3] The leaders of the Front were secular and leftist and had connections with both Najdi and Hijazi people.[3] In 1956 following the riots Al Saeed left Saudi Arabia and settled in Damascus, Syria, where he established the Nasserist Union of People of the Arabian Peninsula (ittihad sha'b al-jazira al-'arabiyya)[8] which was renamed the Union of the Sons of the Arabian Peninsula.[7] Next year the Union became a member of the Arab National Liberation Front which also included the Free Princes Movement founded by Saudi princes led by Prince Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.[7] In 1963 he went to Sanaa, Yemen, where he founded an office for his organization.[1][7] Later Al Saeed left the Arab National Liberation Front and returned to Syria.[7] His writings included the history of the House of Saud in a critical manner.[2] His book, Tarikh Al Sa'ud, was published in 1965.[9] In the book he claimed that in 1943 the Saudi ambassador in Cairo, Abdullah bin Ibrahim Al Mufaddal, asked Muhammad Al Tamimi to create a fake family tree for the Al Saud family and the family of Muhammad Abd al Wahhab, founder of Wahhabism, and to relate them to the origins of Prophet Muhammad.[10] It is also argued in the book that the Al Saud have Jewish roots.[11]

During his visit to Beirut, Lebanon, for interviews with Arab and Western media, he was abducted in the Hamra district of Beirut by Saudi agents on 17 December 1979.[2] Just before his kidnapping Al Saeed praised those who seized Great Mosque in Mecca in November 1979.[1] He described the seizure as a revolution that was the result of newly emerging controversies in Saudi Arabia.[12][13] He added that the incident was organized by the opposition forces[14] and carried out by military officials and tribesmen and that each revolutionary Muslim had a right to capture the Ka'ba as the prophet Mohammed did in order to satisfy his conscience.[12]

In the kidnapping of Al Saeed Abu al Zaim, one of the Fatah movement's senior figures, helped Saudi agents.[2] Al Saeed was taken to his native country by the agents, and his fate has been unknown since then.[2][8] However, Saudi Arabia denied any role in his disappearance.[15]

His case is the first reported instance of the state-sponsored abduction by Saudi Arabia.[16]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d "Saudi Arabia's long and dark history of abductions". Middle East Eye. 12 October 2018. Retrieved 21 April 2021.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Paul Khalifeh (28 January 2019). "Saudi dissident in Beirut believes he escaped same fate as Khashoggi". Middle East Eye. Retrieved 21 April 2021.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b c d John Chalcraft (Spring 2011). "Migration and Popular Protest in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf in the 1950s and 1960s" (PDF). International Labor and Working-Class History (79): 28–47. JSTOR 41306907.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b Rosie Bsheer (February 2018). "A Counter-Revolutionary State: Popular Movements and the Making of Saudi Arabia". Past&Present. 238 (1). doi:10.1093/pastj/gtx057.
  5. ^ Claudia Ghrawi (2016). "A Tamed Urban Revolution: Saudi Arabia's Oil Conurbation and the 1967 Riots". In Nelida Fuccaro (ed.). Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East. Stanford University Press. doi:10.1515/9780804797764. ISBN 9780804797764.
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b Victor McFarland (July 2020). Oil Powers. A History of the U.S.-Saudi Alliance. Columbia University Press. p. 48. doi:10.7312/mcfa19726. ISBN 9780231197267.
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Mordechai Abir (21 June 2019). Saudi Arabia In The Oil Era: Regime And Elites; Conflict And Collaboration. Taylor & Francis. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-00-031069-6.
  8. ^ Jump up to: a b Toby Matthiesen (2014). "Migration, Minorities, and Radical Networks: Labour Movements and Opposition Groups in Saudi Arabia, 1950–1975" (PDF). International Review of Social History (59): 491. doi:10.1017/S0020859014000455.
  9. ^ J. E. Peterson (December 1991). "The Arabian Peninsula in Modern Times: A Historiographical Survey" (PDF). The American Historical Review. 96 (5): 1444. doi:10.2307/2165280. JSTOR 2165280.
  10. ^ Said Mahmud Najm AI Amiri. "The Emergence of Al Wahhabiyyah Movement and its Historical Roots" (PDF). Federation of American Scientists. p. 25. Retrieved 29 April 2021. Translated version of a secret document presented to the Iraqi General Military Intelligence Directorate.
  11. ^ "Servant of the British Empire: On the founding of Ibn Saud's kingdom". Al Akhbar. Beirut. 29 October 2014. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  12. ^ Jump up to: a b Michel G. Nehme (October 1994). "Saudi Arabia 1950-80: Between Nationalism and Religion" (PDF). Middle Eastern Studies. 30 (4): 930, 943. doi:10.1080/00263209408701030. JSTOR 4283682.
  13. ^ Thomas Hegghammer; Stéphane Lacroix (February 2007). "Rejectionist Islamism in Saudi Arabia: The Story of Juhayman al-ʿUtaybi Revisited" (PDF). International Journal of Middle East Studies. 39 (1): 115. JSTOR 4129114.
  14. ^ Toby Matthiesen (Summer 2020). "The Cold War and the Communist Party of Saudi Arabia, 1975–1991". Journal of Cold War Studies. 22 (3): 45. doi:10.1162/jcws_a_00950.
  15. ^ William B. Quandt (1981). Saudi Arabia in the 1980s: Foreign Policy, Security, and Oil. Brookings Institution Press. p. 93. ISBN 9780815772859.
  16. ^ Kareem Fahim; Loveday Morris (5 November 2018). "Saudi campaign to abduct and silence rivals abroad goes back decades". The Washington Post. Istanbul. Retrieved 21 April 2021.
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