Shocking award to Saudi Arabia for fighting terrorism

A week ago, the Director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, used his first trip abroad to present Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef with the CIAs highest award for fighting terrorism, the George Tenet Medal.

Surprisingly the ceremony wasn’t covered by any of the major media, but was picked up on various blogsites where the news was greeted with predictable howls of outrage.  Not surprisingly, most Americans and beyond still see Saudi Arabia as the epicentre of global terrorism, a point which was underlined in a recent research article by Alex Nowrasteh  titled “Where America’s Terrorists Actually Come From”. After sifting through databases, media reports, court documents, and other sources, Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, has arrived at a striking finding: Nationals of the seven countries singled out by Trump have killed zero people in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil between 1975 and 2015.

Nowrasteh has listed foreign-born individuals who committed or were convicted of attempting to commit a terrorist attack on U.S. soil by their country of origin and the number of people they killed. Guess what? The countries at the top of the list, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are not included in Trump’s ban. Shocking!

Editor's Comment
Human rights are sacred

It highlights the need to protect rights such as access to clean water, education, healthcare and freedom of expression.President Duma Boko, rightly honours past interventions from securing a dignified burial for Gaoberekwe Pitseng in the CKGR to promoting linguistic inclusion. Yet, they also expose a critical truth, that a nation cannot sustainably protect its people through ad hoc acts of compassion alone.It is time for both government and the...

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