Nasser Al Saeed (1923–unknown) was a Saudi Arabian writer and the founder of the
Arabian Peninsula People's Union
The Arabian Peninsula People's Union ( ar, اتحاد الشعب في الجزيرة العربية) was a Nasserism, Nasserist political party in Saudi Arabia. The APPU was founded in 1959 by Nasser Al Saeed whilst in exile in Beirut. Saeed had b ...
(APPU).
He was one of the most significant critics of the
Saudi royal family
The House of Saud ( ar, آل سُعُود, ʾĀl Suʿūd ) is the ruling royal family of Saudi Arabia. It is composed of the descendants of Muhammad bin Saud, founder of the Emirate of Diriyah, known as the First Saudi state (1727–1818), and ...
.
He was kidnapped in December 1979 in Beirut, Lebanon, and there has been no information about his whereabouts since then. His case is the first reported instance of the state-sponsored abduction by Saudi Arabia.
Biography
Al Saeed was born in 1923
and hailed from a family from the
Shammar tribe
The tribe of Shammar ( ar, شَمَّر, Šammar) is a tribal Arab Qahtan confederation, descended from the Yemeni tribe of Tayy as they originated in Yemen before migrating into present day Saudi Arabia, It is the biggest branch of Tayy tribe. I ...
based in
Hail
Hail is a form of solid precipitation. It is distinct from ice pellets (American English "sleet"), though the two are often confused. It consists of balls or irregular lumps of ice, each of which is called a hailstone. Ice pellets generally fal ...
.
He was employed in
Aramco
Saudi Aramco ( ar, أرامكو السعودية '), officially the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (formerly Arabian-American Oil Company) or simply Aramco, is a Saudi Arabian public petroleum and natural gas company based in Dhahran. , it is one of ...
.
Al Saeed involved in protests against the royal establishment in 1947 due to the inefficiency of Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries to end the attempts to establish an Israeli state in the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...
.
[ The protests became much more intense following the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the recognition of the state by the U.S. which had close ties with Saudi Arabia.] His opposition continued in the 1950s through radio broadcast.[ Al Saeed was one of the leaders of the strike among Aramco workers in 1953.][ Following this incident he was put under house arrest in Hail.] At the end of the same year and in the early days of 1954 Al Saeed and other strike leaders formed the National Reform Front.[ They were ]secular
Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...
and leftist
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
and had connections with both Najdi and Hijazi people.[ In 1956 following the riots Al Saeed left Saudi Arabia and settled in ]Damascus, Syria
)), is an adjective which means "spacious".
, motto =
, image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg
, image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg
, seal_type = Seal
, map_caption =
, ...
, where he established the Nasserist Union of People of the Arabian Peninsula (ittihad sha'b al-jazira al-'arabiyya) in 1959 which was renamed as the Union of the Sons of the Arabian Peninsula.[ In 1960 the Union became a member of the Arab National Liberation Front which also included the ]Free Princes Movement
The Free Princes Movement ( ar, حركة الأمراء الأحرار; al-umara’ al-ahrar) was a Saudi liberal political movement that existed from 1958 to 1964. Its members were known as the Young Najd (Najd al-Fattah in Arabic), Free Princes ...
founded by the Saudi royals led by Prince Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud
Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud ( ar, طلال بن عبد العزيز آل سعود ''Ṭalāl bin ʿAbdulʿazīz Āl Saʿūd''; 15 August 1931 – 22 December 2018), formerly also called The Red Prince, was a Saudi Arabian politician, dissident, b ...
.[ Al Saeed established the APPU in 1960. In 1963 he went to ]Sanaa
Sanaa ( ar, صَنْعَاء, ' , Yemeni Arabic: ; Old South Arabian: 𐩮𐩬𐩲𐩥 ''Ṣnʿw''), also spelled Sana'a or Sana, is the capital and largest city in Yemen and the centre of Sanaa Governorate. The city is not part of the Governo ...
, Yemen
Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, north and ...
, where he founded an office for his organization.[ Later he left the Arab National Liberation Front and returned to Syria.][
]
Work
His book, ''Tarikh Al Sa'ud'' (Arabic: ''History of Al Saud''), was published in 1965. In the book Al Saeed claimed that in 1943 the Saudi ambassador to Egypt, Abdullah bin Ibrahim Al Mufaddal, asked Muhammad Al Tamimi to create a fake family tree
A family tree, also called a genealogy or a pedigree chart, is a chart representing family relationships in a conventional tree structure. More detailed family trees, used in medicine and social work, are known as genograms.
Representations of ...
for the Al Saud family and the family of Muhammad Abd al Wahhab, founder of Wahhabism
Wahhabism ( ar, ٱلْوَهَّابِيَةُ, translit=al-Wahhābiyyah) is a Sunni Islamic revivalist and fundamentalist movement associated with the reformist doctrines of the 18th-century Arabian Islamic scholar, theologian, preacher, an ...
, and to relate them to the origins of Prophet Muhammad
Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monoth ...
. It is also argued in the book that the Al Saud have Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
roots. Ghassan Salamé
Ghassan Salamé ( ar, غسان سلامة; born 1951) is a Paris-based Lebanese academic. He served as the Lebanese Minister of Culture from 2000 to 2003. He was the Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) and professor of Inte ...
remarks that ''Tarikh Al Sa'ud'' is not objective and lacks the necessary evidence to support its strong claims against the Saudi royal family.[
]
Disappearance and aftermath
During his visit to Beirut, Lebanon
Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint of ...
for interviews with Arab and Western media, Al Saeed was abducted in the Hamra district of Beirut by Saudi agents on 17 December 1979.[ Just before his kidnapping Al Saeed praised those who seized ]Great Mosque
A congregational mosque or Friday mosque (, ''masjid jāmi‘'', or simply: , ''jāmi‘''; ), or sometimes great mosque or grand mosque (, ''jāmi‘ kabir''; ), is a mosque for hosting the Friday noon prayers known as ''jumu'ah''.*
*
*
*
*
*
*
...
in Mecca
Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red ...
in November 1979.[ He described the seizure as a revolution that was the result of newly emerging controversies in Saudi Arabia.] He added that the incident was organized by the opposition forces and carried out by military officials and tribesmen and that each revolutionary Muslim had a right to capture the Ka'ba
The Kaaba (, ), also spelled Ka'bah or Kabah, sometimes referred to as al-Kaʿbah al-Musharrafah ( ar, ٱلْكَعْبَة ٱلْمُشَرَّفَة, lit=Honored Ka'bah, links=no, translit=al-Kaʿbah al-Musharrafah), is a building at the c ...
as the prophet Mohammed
Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monoth ...
did in order to satisfy his conscience.[
In the kidnapping of Al Saeed Abu al Zaim, one of the Fatah movement's senior figures, helped Saudi agents.][ The mediator of this collaboration was the Fatah leader ]Yasser Arafat
Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini (4 / 24 August 1929 – 11 November 2004), popularly known as Yasser Arafat ( , ; ar, محمد ياسر عبد الرحمن عبد الرؤوف عرفات القدوة الحسيني, Mu ...
who was paid by the Saudi authorities for it. Al Saeed was taken to his native country by the agents, and his fate has been unknown since then.[ Based on the Arab media reports Ghassan Salamé states that Al Saeed was executed immediately after he was brought to Saudi Arabia.][ Saudi Arabia denied any role in his disappearance.]
See also
*List of kidnappings
The following is a list of kidnappings summarizing the events of each individual case, including instances of celebrity abductions, claimed hoaxes, suspected kidnappings, extradition abductions, and mass kidnappings.
Before 1900
1900–1949
...
*List of people who disappeared
Lists of people who disappeared include those whose current whereabouts are unknown, or whose deaths are unsubstantiated. Many people who disappear are eventually declared dead ''in absentia''. Some of these people were possibly subjected to enfo ...
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saeed, Nasser
20th-century Saudi Arabian writers
1923 births
1970s missing person cases
Human rights abuses in Lebanon
Human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia
Kidnapped people
Missing person cases in Lebanon
People from Ha'il
Political party founders
Saudi Arabian dissidents
Saudi Arabian emigrants to Yemen
Saudi Arabian prisoners and detainees
Year of death missing