Ben Barrack
For nearly two days after the murder of Tom Clements – the Executive Director of the Colorado State Department of Corrections – significant attention was paid to the case of a Saudi prisoner named Homaidan Al-Turki. Then, after the death of Evan Ebel in Decatur, TX on March 21st, interest in Al-Turki evaporated like a drop of water on a sizzling Arizona sidewalk.
Clements was murdered in his Monument, Colorado home on March 19th. When Ebel was killed by police in a Texas car chase on March 21st, he became the primary suspect and Clements’ connection to Al-Turki, who is extremely well thought of at the highest levels of the Saudi government and Royal family, didn’t seem to matter anymore.
Consider this timeline…
April 18, 2012: Al-Turki, who is serving a life sentence for charges relating to human trafficking, enslavement and sexual molestation of a young Indonesian woman, requested that he be extradited to Saudi Arabia to serve out the remainder of his term; this essentially meant he would be set free.
September, 2012: Al-Turki’s brother announced that a deal had been reached on a prisoner exchange which would send Homaidan back to Saudi Arabia.
March 11, 2013: Clements sent Al-Turki a letter in which the Saudi’s request to be “transferred” to Saudi Arabia was denied.
March 14, 2013: Approximately six weeks after being released from prison four years before he should have been, due to a clerical error, Evan Ebel removed his ankle bracelet. Despite being on “intensive supervised parole”, authorities didn’t take much interest in Ebel until the day of Clements’ murder on March 19th and didn’t issue an arrest warrant until the day after.
March 17, 2013: Two days prior to Clements’ murder, a pizza delivery man in Denver named Nathan Leon was murdered and Ebel later became the primary suspect after a Dominoes pizza box and shirt was found in the trunk of Ebel’s car. Ebel allegedly used the same gun in his shootout with police that was used in Clements’ murder on March 21st, when he met his end. Why would Ebel not be as interested in ditching evidence tying him to two murders as he was in ditching his ankle bracelet?
March 19, 2013: Clements opened the front door of his home in Monument, Colorado. Soon thereafter, he was shot dead.
March 20-21, 2013: News reports include the possibility of a Saudi hit on Clements for the latter’s refusal to transfer Al-Turki to Saudi Arabia.
Once Ebel was identified as the primary suspect in the murders of Clements and Leon, reports about Al-Turki all but disappear.
That interest in Al-Turki being involved in Clements’ murder would dwindle after a more likely suspect was identified is not necessarily surprising.
However, that there is no interest in the fact that Al-Turki is so highly thought of in Saudi Arabia is particularly noteworthy. This is just another in a long line of examples of the American media’s disinterest in Saudi Arabia in general.
Perhaps western media is afflicted with Saudi-phobia.
Then again, applying the standard for Islamophobia set by the likes of CAIR, those of us who raise questions are the ones who must have Saudi-phobia.