Media Release Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

In his 12 December graduation address to the UK’s Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, Prince Charles reportedly attacked ISIS as a cult of death and destruction … defiling ancient lands and seducing a frightening number of lost young people”. He had similarly bemoaned the mass slaughter of Christians and other minorities in the Middle East and the radicalisation of Islamic youth in the UK” in an 8 February 2015 BBC Radio 2 Sunday Hour interview.

Citizens Electoral Council (CEC) leader Craig Isherwood today accused Charles of utter hypocrisy”. Demanded Isherwood, If Charles is genuine he should prove it by disbanding his arms trade with the Saudi Royals who fund and arm ISIS, and by shutting down his Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS), which during his time as patron has included on its board known funders and advocates of al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorism. In fact, virtually everyone on his board has been implicated in orchestrating, financing or cheerleading for al-Qaeda and ISIS. If he does not take such action, his comments should be seen for what they are: a calculated deflection from his own role as the lynchpin of the Anglo-Saudi apparatus that funds global terrorism with the proceeds of the al-Yamamah arms-for-oil trade.

Charles is a known control freak when it comes to media coverage,” Isherwood continued. As UK Channel 4 recently experienced, he demands media outlets sign a 15-page contract giving him complete editorial control before he grants interviews. What is he afraid of—that his business and personal relationships with the terror-financing Saudis will come out?”

Charles betrayed his extreme sensitivity on this issue during his 14 November visit to Western Australia, when he used fascist counter-terrorism powers to shut down CEC activists at the Albany Show who had displayed a sign highlighting his involvement with the financiers of international terrorism. In a 25 November release headlined Prince Charles and Saudi-backed terrorism: Demand answers!”, the CEC responded to that outrage by providing irrefutable proof of Charles’s involvement. The following is the relevant section of that release.

Al-Yamamah and al-Qaeda/ISIS

Crucial to the financing of modern international terrorism is the infamous al-Yamamah arms deal struck between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan in 1985, which is still running and which by 2013 had generated an estimated US$160 billion¹. This gigantic slush fund was used to finance the rise of first al-Qaeda and then ISIS. The later phases of al-Yamamah—the richest single contract in British history—were negotiated by Charles himself during 12 official visits to Saudi Arabia and innumerable private ones. Britain’s Serious Fraud Office investigated al-Yamamah in 2003-06 for corruption and bribes on a gigantic scale, but then-PM Tony Blair suddenly shut down the probe, claiming that Our relationship with Saudi Arabia is vitally important for our country in terms of counter-terrorism”.

The real orchestrator of the cover-up, however, was not Blair, but Charles. A glimpse of that reality appeared in Mark Hollingsworth’s 2005 book Saudi Babylon, a chronicle of the Saudi Kingdom’s imprisonment and torture of Sandy Mitchell in 2000. The book provided a detailed account of an extraordinary April 2003 meeting at New Scotland Yard:

Prince Charles’s relationships with prominent House of Saud members have created serious problems and obstacles to UK agencies investigating claims of Saudi financing of international terrorism, according to Special Branch sources [emphasis added]. The delicacy and sensitivity of Prince Charles’s friendships was raised during a meeting at New Scotland Yard in April 2003. Families of the victims of 9/11 had filed a lawsuit accusing some members of the House of Saud, notably defence minister Prince Sultan and the new UK ambassador, Prince Turki, of supporting al-Qaeda in the past. Their lawyers were in Europe investigating allegations that senior Saudi royals had backed Islamic charities, run by the government, which funded the 9/11 hijackers.

The meeting at New Scotland Yard was attended by detective chief inspector Stephen Ratcliffe, the Special Branch officer in charge of tracking terrorism financing; Peter Clarke, national director of countering terrorist funding; Robert Randall, a police liaison officer; and lawyers for the families of the 9/11 victims. Alan Gerson, a lawyer for 9/11 relatives, outlined their case and said that the Saudi royal family were put on notice in 1999 by US National Security Council (NSC) officials in Riyadh that funds for al-Qaeda came from Saudi. ‘There were similar warnings to the Saudis in London as well,’ said Ratcliffe, ‘although some of our regulatory agencies were not always up to scratch in tracing the money.’

‘Well, have the UK authorities uncovered anything to show that charities run by some members of the Saudi royal family were channelling money to the terrorists?’ asked Gerson.

Ratcliffe looked hesitant and a little sheepish. ‘Our ability to investigate the Saudis is very limited,’ he said. He then paused, looked across at a photograph of Prince Charles on the wall, raised his eyebrows and smiled knowingly without saying a word. ‘He did not say anything but the message was crystal clear when he looked at the picture,’ said a police officer who was present. ‘It was Prince Charles’s special relationship with the Saudis which was a problem. He gave no other reason why they were restricted.’”²

One need not rely solely on Hollingsworth’s account of Charles’s intimacy with Saudi kingpins of international terrorism. The two Saudi influentials named in that New Scotland Yard meeting, al-Yamamah’s Prince Bandar and Prince Turki, for instance, were two of only eight foreign royals whom Charles invited to his 2005 wedding with Camilla Parker-Bowles, while Bandar biographer William Simpson reported that Bandar’s relationship with Charles was long-standing and very close”. As for Bandar’s brother-in-law Prince Turki, he headed Saudi General Intelligence from 1979 to 2001, during which time he created al-Qaeda. He suddenly resigned from that post only 10 days before 9/11, and though featured in the 9/11 families’ lawsuit and subsequently named by a convicted 9/11 conspirator as one of its main orchestrators, Turki went on to become Saudi Ambassador to the UK (2003-05) and to the USA (2005-06).

Charles’s Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies: Terror Central

One of Charles’s main private charities” is his Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OCIS), of which he has long been the Patron. The British press habitually refers to Charles’s fascination with Islam” to explain his tightness with the OCIS and related activities. Already some three decades ago, Charles convinced his good friend, the now-deceased Saudi King Fahd, to finance the construction of a network of mosques in the UK, which was soon to house the first phases of terrorist infrastructure where the Wahhabist radicals were trained, such as the infamous Finsbury Park Mosque in north London. Among other atrocities, Finsbury personnel were involved in the 7 July 2005 subway bombings (7/7”) in London which killed 52 and wounded 700 more, and in the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. In a US courtroom in 2014, Finsbury leader Abu Hamza al-Masri stated in his defence that he had been working for MI5 all along.³ Consider the present or past board members and the major financiers of Charles’s OCIS, virtually all of whom have been implicated in financing, orchestrating or advocating terrorism.⁴

Prince Bandar bin Sultan contributed an estimated US$13-24.4 million to the OCIS in the early 1990s, according to various accounts, and arranged for then-Saudi King Fahd to kick in another $32.4 million in 1997. While Saudi ambassador to the United States, Bandar provided financing and logistical support to the 9/11 terrorists.⁵

Prince Turki bin Faisal, a member of the OCIS Board of Trustees and chairman of its Strategy Advisory Committee, has been named as financier and coordinator of 9/11.

Prince Mohamed bin Faisal, a brother of Prince Turki and known as a pioneer of Islamic banking”, was named by the 9/11 families in a lawsuit.

Abdullah Omar Naseef co-founded the OCIS and chairs its Board of Trustees. In the 1980s, Naseef co-created Maktab al-Khidamat, the backbone organisation of the Arab-Afghan mujahedin in Afghanistan, which in 1989 changed its name to al-Qaeda. He, too, has been named a financier of terrorism in a 9/11 families’ lawsuit. After Queen Elizabeth II herself granted the OCIS a Royal charter in May 2011, Naseef exulted, This is very good news. This shows that the British government, the Queen, and the whole state are very much aware that the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies is doing very well to make relations between the Islamic world and the Western world closer and to bring Islam and its role into the international arena.”

Yusuf al-Qaradawi was a board member of the OCIS from 1985 until 2006. Qatar-based spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, he has issued fatwas for the overthrow and assassination of Libya’s Qaddafi and Syria’s Assad, and in July 2012 threatened the assassination of Egyptian leader Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, now President of Egypt. In a 30 January 2009 broadcast on Al-Jazeera TV al-Qaradawi proclaimed that Hitler Put the Jews in Their Place”: Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them—even though they exaggerated this issue—he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them.”

The bin Laden family, besides the notoriety brought by its famous member Osama bin Laden, was among the Saudi, Qatari and Kuwaiti private donors of some $70 million to the OCIS, endowing its Mohammed bin Laden chair”, named after Osama’s father. Osama had been recruited by Prince Turki to set up the Maktab al-Khidamat network, the future al-Qaeda.

[End excerpt of 25 November CEC press release.]

Isherwood concluded, Instead of the media merely whinging about Charles’s onerous conditions, why don’t they report on the reasons for them—that he is terrified that someone might ask about the facts cited above. And citizens in both the UK and Australia should demand that the media—as well as their local MPs—do so. Otherwise we’re all just sitting around waiting for the next eruption of mass murder.”