Today’s Royal Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
King Faisal ascended to the throne of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1964, and became a controversial but popular leader. He was well-educated and well-traveled, a prudent financial manager and an effective diplomat. He instituted many progressive reforms within his country, abolishing slavery, creating welfare programs and providing for female education. He was astute enough to couch his more liberal policies in a religious context to satisfy the most conservative Islamic authorities in the kingdom.
There were widespread protests when Saudi Arabia’s first television network began broadcasting in 1965, with conservatives believing that television was in direct opposition to the Koranic ban of human images. In 1967, Prince Khalid Bin Musa-Id, the king’s nephew, stormed Saudi TV headquarters and was shot and killed by security guards.
Khalid’s brother Faisal Bin Musaid spent several years studying in the United States, where he was known as a likable young man who was a poor student and dabbled in drugs. He returned to Saudi Aarabia and supposedly told his mother of his plan to assassinate his uncle, the king, blaming him for his brother’s death. She in turn told the king of the plot and he replied that if such a thing happened, it would be Allah’s will.
On March 25, 1975, King Faisal was holding a majlis, meaning he made himself available in his palace to hear petitions from his subjects. Prince Faisal approached the king, who recognized him and leaned down to kiss him in greeting. Prince Faisal pulled a gun from his robe and fired three shots, two of them hitting the king in the head and one missing. A bodyguard struck the prince with his golden sword, still in its sheath, and the oil minister, also present, cried out several times not to kill the prince. King Faisal was rushed to the hospital, where he was given a heart massage and blood transfusions. He reportedly asked that his nephew not be executed, and then died.
Prince Faisal was at first declared insane but a team of doctors who examined him found him competent. He was convicted of the regicide and just three months after the murder, he was publicly beheaded in Riyadh. His execution, like the killing of the king, was carried live on Saudi TV. There is a widespread belief in Saudi Arabia and much of the Arab world that Prince Faisal acted not to avenge his brother, but rather was a pawn of a Western conspiracy involving the CIA, over oil boycotts, but nothing has been definitively proven on that score.
Kids these days, eh?
Culled From: Wikipedia
Submitted by: Aimee
I don’t imagine the good king would have been happy to know that his dying request that his nephew’s life be spared was ignored. – Aimee
Holocaust Revisited
In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, I thought I’d share my travelogue to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in Germany.
A gift shop? A gift shop?! God knows what kind of souvenirs you would have at a death camp…