Has the Saudi govt helped another criminal suspect flee?
Mohammed Zuraibi Alzoabi, 28, a Saudi citizen who studied at a university in Nova Scotia, Canada, and faces multiple criminal charges failed to show for a court date and authorities don’t know where he is, according to the local Chronicle Herald newspaper.
Alzoabi was to face charges of sexual assault, assault, forcible confinement, uttering threats, criminal harassment, dangerous driving and assault with a weapon (a vehicle) in separate trials related to two incidents that occurred in Sydney [Nova Scotia] between 2016 and 2017.
His $37,500 bail, posted in cash, which was forfeited at a hearing on Monday was provided by the Saudi embassy, and Canada’s Cape Breton police confirmed to the Chronicle Herald on that they have the passport he was forced to turn over.
“It should be impossible (for him to leave the country or enter another without a passport) unless Saudi Arabia furnished him with a Saudi travel document,” Halifax-based immigration attorney Lee Cohen told the newspaper. “They have done this before.” [Continue reading…]
In December, The Oregonian reported:
A black SUV pulled up to Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah’s home in Southeast Portland two weeks before his June 2017 trial.
Noorah, a Saudi national charged the year before in the fatal hit-and-run of a teenage girl crossing Hawthorne Boulevard, had a bag packed that Saturday afternoon.
The private car drove the 21-year-old Portland Community College student to a sand-and-gravel yard two miles away.
That’s where Noorah sliced off the tracking monitor he had worn around his ankle for months, according to interviews with federal authorities. He then discarded it at the scene before vanishing, leaving a victim’s family crushed and prosecutors furious and flummoxed.
Law enforcement officials now say they believe Noorah got an illicit passport and boarded a plane — likely a private carrier — to flee the country.
Despite unknowns in the ongoing investigation, officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Marshals Service are all but certain who helped orchestrate the remarkable escape: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. [Continue reading…]