The Day Satire Died
Tony Greenstein
I had the misfortune to listen to a Fahad Naza or something similar explaining the difficulties the Saudi regime faced in the wake of 47 executions. The BBC has an appalling record in respect of prettifying the Saudi regime but putting this creature on to defend the executions was despicable, even by your standards.
If this was the Russian regime and Putin you would have adopted a completely different approach and emphasised the question of human rights. That didn't get a look in.
This reptile even described the 47 executed as having gone through and exhausted the Saudi judicial appeal process when it is a matter of fact that there is no such process. There are merely arbitrary decisions handed down by Saudi judges in coordination with the regime and appeals and trials held in the absence of the accused's lawyers and without any evidence being produced and subject to challenge.
Naza described the Saudi regime as being forced into having to take the action it did, because of 'terrorism' when he might have mentioned it is this very regime that has long sponsored terrorism, Isis included. He also 'forgot' to mention the Shi'ite cleric who had been guilty of nothing more than political opposition to the vicious Saudi regime. We know nothing about the other people murdered except that no trial in Saudi Arabia is fair.
What the BBC of course did not do, given your complicity in bolstering the Saudi regime over the years, is mention the hypocrisy of the Saudis chairing the UN Human Rights Council and the British governments hypocrisy in supporting and voting for their election to that position. That, unlike the breaking of diplomatic relations with Iran, was not considered newsworthy. I wonder why other than the slavish adherence to British foreign policy norms.
It is difficult to believe that the BBC can get any lower. But then you always manage it. Your coverage is just a grovelling echo of David Cameron's amoral approach to the Saudi barbarians.