In 1982, the Crisis Committee in the Middle East was formed to support the Palestinians during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in that year. It is concerned with crises in the Middle East in general. Since its establishment in Connecticut, the Committee has been involved in a number of struggles for human rights. We have begun to focus its attention on human rights issues in Saudi Arabia for a relatively short period of time.
Today, we are launching a campaign in the state of Connecticut, in the United States of America, against a university that has links to the Saudi security and military apparatus, and we strongly believe in the effectiveness of campaigns launched against tyrannical regimes everywhere.
The principles of justice are completely absent from the practices of the Saudi regime, and we are trying to record our objection to its practices, and we are working hard to condemn Saudi Arabia since the beginning of the barbaric war launched by the Kingdom on Yemen. In 2016, we organized two sit-ins inside the Yale Law School after it received ten million dollars in funding from a Saudi billionaire with ties to the government.
In the same context, we have, in cooperation with other human rights groups, created a website to put pressure on the United States of America to end its alliance with the Saudi regime.
In 2017, we learned that the University of New Haven in Connecticut is seeking to establish a partnership with the King Fahd Security College in Saudi Arabia, which trains all members of the Saudi police, and sometimes the military as well.
The partnership was specifically with the Henry C. Lee Institute of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences at the University of New Haven. Founded in 1998, the institute bears the name of the famous forensic scientist Henry C. Lee, who also heads it. Lee is known for testifying in several high-profile trials.
Our committee wrote a letter of complaint to the university without getting any response. After that, forty American activists, writers, and academics signed an open petition calling on the college to end its agreement with the King Fahd Security College. It is worth noting here that New Haven is a private university, so there is no governmental authority that regulates its funding, and its financial resources and funding sources are not transparent, and the public cannot view them.
Although we did not receive any response from the college administration after sending the petition demanding the cessation of cooperation with a kingdom that does not respect human rights and engages in a merciless war against the Yemenis, in the student newspaper the petition was mentioned on the front page, and an article in the liberal magazine “The Nation” spoke in Spring 2018 about it too. The petition was not discussed after that.
On November 2, 2018, Saudi citizen and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared after going to the Saudi consulate in Turkey. It soon became clear that Khashoggi had been killed, dismembered and disappeared, despite the hopes of his friends that he was alive.
Investigations later revealed that the first defendant in the case was the forensic doctor and forensic expert, Salah al-Tubaigy, who did so using a bone saw.
After the publication of Al-Tubaigy's photos, it became clear that he was a member of the Saudi Forensic Medicine Society, while Henry C. Lee was a colleague of his, who shared with him the membership of the editorial board of the Journal of the Saudi Forensic Medicine Society, and this relationship was the first red arrow in the case.
We issued a press release, and then a press article was published in courant magazine, which got a lot of attention. The journalist talked about Henry Al-Tubaigy's relationship with C. Lee, and after an interview with him, the latter confirmed that he did not remember Al-Tubaigy, and that he might have collided with him in a meeting.
Many media outlets covered the New Haven records, such as the national magazine "Newsweek", the student magazine at the university, the radio program Counter Point, the radio program, the Democracy Now program, which is the best and most famous left-wing program in the United States, and Al Jazeera channel.
Domestically, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal has raised his concerns publicly, something he had never done about Saudi Arabia beforehand.
In January of 2019 we went to West Haven City Hall. We spoke and a number of us raised banners asking the city council to speak to the university about its relations with Saudi Arabia. It turned out that the head of the council was the police chief at the university, but he did nothing.
In an op-ed that spring in the university's newspaper, we called on Henry C. Lee to resign from the board of the Saudi Forensic Journal, and for the university to end its ties with King Fahd College. Neither university president Lee nor its board of directors interacted with us publicly, even after Tubaigy was convicted of a crime. Murder in a Saudi court later that year.
We asked the university again, in May 2020, and since their contract with King Fahd Security College was to expire in June 2021, we asked not to renew it. The college did not interact with us, but it turned out later that it did not renew the contract, and this may be due to the pressure and problems caused by this cooperation.
A Washington think tank reporter called me saying he wanted to write a story about the university and its relationship with Saudi Arabia. I gave him all the details, he did his own research and then called a faculty member who lived in Saudi Arabia, who told him he was now in the US because the program had ended.
Today, despite our inability to find a link linking the university with King Fahd Security College, we cannot consider this as strict proof that all forms of cooperation between the two have ended, based on the pressure that was placed on the university. However, in light of the information we have, we can consider that we have achieved success. The hope is to carry out later pressure campaigns, and it helps us to move using similar tactics in other issues.
Today, the committee is working on various human rights issues in the Kingdom. A television program has been created that follows many files, such as the abuse of human rights activists Loujain al-Hathloul, who was released from prison but is forced to remain silent, the ill-treatment of the Shiite Muslims, women's rights issues, and the failure to abolish the death penalty for drug crimes.
In the end, Saudi Arabia pays millions of dollars to exploit academic edifices, media institutions, and others, and today we have extensive information in this field, despite that we believe that one candle helps lighten the darkness, so the vigorous work by international and local human rights organizations must continue, and pressure in all forms must continue.
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*كلمة ستانلي هيلر في المؤتمر السنوي الثالث لضحايا الانتهاكات في المملكة العربية السعودية الذي عقد بتاريخ 9و 10 ديسمبر 2022.