This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.
The House of Saud has unparalleled wealth and influence.
While the royal family behaves extravagantly,
travels abroad, displays this wealth
and sometimes behaves not according to what they preach,
we find that Saudi society itself is controlled.
Yet their grip on power is facing its most serious challenge.
You can see the perfect storm
forming around Saudi Arabia at this stage.
A restless young population is demanding change.
You feel like you're not a human and you have no right to even dream.
No right to do anything.
Now a new crown prince is promising to transform the country.
This leadership said - "To hell with it, we're going to do it."
A royal decree has been issued in Saudi Arabia
giving women the right to drive.
APPLAUSE
But staying in power also means crushing opposition.
It is trying to be the ally of the West,
suggesting that he is moderate, whereas actually beheading
people whose offence was to attend a protest.
For decades, this extraordinary family have been the great
survivors of the Middle East.
Now their future rests on a young, untested prince.
I think it is crucial, I think we should very much want him,
want his country to succeed.
If something happens to Saudi Arabia, this would be catastrophic
for the region and, frankly, catastrophic for the world.
DRUMMING AND SINGING
Less than 100 years ago,
the House of Saud ruled a relatively obscure desert kingdom.
But oil changed all of that.
The Saudi royal family controlled the revenue of the Kingdom that
comes mainly from oil.
They can spend it as they wish
and nobody has the right to challenge them.
But their power doesn't simply come from wealth.
It comes from their role within Islam.
The King styles himself as the custodian of Islam's two
holiest sites - Medina and Mecca.
And with that power comes huge responsibility.
It is important for them to be seen as role models in religion
in their country.
The textbooks that the state publishes
and gives to Saudi citizens teach that one of the greatest
sins you could possibly engage in is hypocrisy.
Specifically one who engages in un-Islamic acts
while claiming to be a Muslim.
And that's also why the royal family is so sensitive
when it comes to stories coming out about members
of the royal family that contradict with the sort of public faith
that they are supposed to be portraying at home.
Few of those who work for the House of Saud
talk about their experiences.
The majority of the Saudis that I worked for were paranoid,
not all of them, but, yes, the majority of them.
But it depends who it was and where you were
in different situations.
And a lot of them were paranoid because they did not want to be seen
doing something they shouldn't do.
Joao Ferreira is a former bodyguard who has
worked for several Saudi princes.
They like to have girls for the day, for the week, whatever it may be.
They are extremely well-paid models.
We'd get a description of what the prince would like
and this agency would ship girls in from everywhere -
even America - if they fitted the description.
In reality, they are high-class prostitutes
and they are getting paid for a service.
Money does buy love, of course, because that girlfriend
is madly in love with him for the day or for the hour or for the week.
Whether you say the word prostitute or not,
at the end of the day, that is exactly what they are.
I think Saudi princes are really afraid of their secrets.
It's a secret for them,
or that their lifestyle comes out in the public.
Stephanie says her clients include high-paying Saudi royals.
The most amount that I earnt in one day was 20,000.
Then I also had some jewellery from Bulgari and Rolex.
Yeah, they are really good clients and not only because of
the money, because, of course, they give, like, a lot of money,
but the ones I met, they were really respectful,
they really treated me as a princess.
They always gave us the best, you know, the best hotels,
good hotel rooms.
They didn't treat us as a number.
They gave me like an old-school phone
so I had a Nokia or something with my own SIM card.
But it was more for them
so that I couldn't take pictures of the prince.
Any time they are not with the prince,
then they are watched 24 hours, basically, if need be.
So you always know where they are and they always have to report
where they are going, who they are going with, that is then reported
to the prince and he will say - OK, send somebody with her or not,
depending on who it is and how long they stay
and how much they like them.
Despite the secrecy that surrounds the private lives of some Saudi
princes, stories have circulated about bad royal behaviour abroad.
But very few cases ever come to court.
Some of those royal family members, some of them,
they live, themselves, in a very narcissistic way.
Pathological grandiosity.
They believe they are above the law all over the world.
London has always been a favourite playground
for the Saudi royal family.
Meet Prince Saud Abdulaziz Bin Nasir al Saud,
the great-grandson of Saudi's first king.
London gave the Prince an opportunity
to pursue a very different lifestyle.
I crawl up his back...
Body to body, yeah, I'm excited,
he's excited, he's underneath me,
I'm kissing his ears, massaging his head.
You can tell he is horny as hell.
Homosexual activity is illegal in Saudi Arabia.
But in the discreet surroundings of a top London hotel,
who could possibly find out?
But this Saudi prince also had extreme issues with his temper.
In 2010, CCTV from the hotel lift shows him
attacking his manservant Bandar Abdulaziz.
Three weeks later, Bandar was found dead
in the prince's hotel room.
The blood trails, we could see the body had been moved
and it had been dragged across the floor of the room
and been placed on the bed.
The prince gave a story,
saying that Bandar had been attacked whilst out walking himself.
He said he believed he died
as a result of the injuries from the robbery.
Police were sceptical.
A major alarm bell was the CCTV in the hotel lift,
where Bandar was lethally punched around the head
and struck about the body by the prince.
And the impression I got was that this was something he was used to
and he knew it was his place to take a beating.
That very quickly broke the prince's story,
we were able to get really good evidence
to prove that he was responsible.
Next - the prince tried to get off the hook by claiming
he had diplomatic immunity.
He had no diplomatic immunity, that was pointed out
and that claim went away very quickly.
At his trial at the Old Bailey,
the prince denied any sexual relationship with his manservant.
His sexuality became central to the prosecution case.
His masseur was called to give evidence.
Gasps from all around
and particularly from the Saudi corner, you could...
Because... "What have I done here?"
I just think, "Have I given too much graphic detail?"
But that's what you're there for, right?
Because the guy said, "Yeah, I killed the guy, but I'm not gay."
During the course of the investigation,
we examined the prince's mobile phones,
on the phone there were photographs of Bandar naked in sexual positions.
Again, that helped to prove the nature of the relationship
between himself and the prince.
During the trial, the prince's lawyer were anxious to prove
that he was not in a gay relationship.
I take offence at that.
Like being gay is the worst thing in the world,
far more than killing a guy.
Hypocrisy.
And a killer.
The prince was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Three years later, under a prisoner transfer agreement,
he was returned to Saudi Arabia to serve out his sentence.
It is unknown what has happened to him since,
but the transfer angers some.
And it's just so wrong. It's an insult to the guy who was killed,
it's an insult to the justice here.
It's an insult to people like me who actually stood up there bravely
to be counted and give evidence against
one of the world's most powerful families.
It's an insult.
I think he has got away with it.
The royal family and the King himself are obsessed
with the way they are seen in the West.
And more people are aware that Saudi issues
are being discussed in the Western media,
the more they believe that their regime is vulnerable.
That is why they warn their own members, they say, "Be careful,
"when you leave the country, don't put us in trouble."
It's a matter of not to embarrass the King
in front of the British or American press or European press.
HE SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE
SQUEAKY FART
RUMBLING FART
It does feel awesome
to see millions of people
reading my tweets or watching my videos.
HE SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE
It gives me more encouragement to do more.
HE SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE
Ghanem Aldosari is a Saudi blogger.
From London, he runs one of the most popular social media accounts -
mocking the Saudi royal family's bad behaviour.
His videos have achieved around 180 million hits
and he has a huge following in Saudi Arabia.
In my videos, I cover most of the bad behaviours.
The parties, how they spend their money, their gambling,
the misuse of drugs.
I'm very dangerous to them,
otherwise they wouldn't call me terrorist.
I do think I'm a danger to them,
because I talk to the public.
And I start changing the mind of the public.
And they don't like it.
The power of the House of Saud relies upon maintaining
its status as a family that is fit to rule.
But social media has given Saudis more access
than ever before to critical information about their rulers.
Saudi citizens have been in the dark before, but at the moment,
we have campaigns on Twitter, for example, that track this kind
of images of the princes
when they are not supposed to be behaving as they do,
and people follow them and they are aware of their excesses.
It is building up consciousness about those princes
and what they can do.
For decades, Saudi royals have
enjoyed lives of extraordinary privilege.
They have been able to do so
because of a unique social contract which has
provided their citizens with well-paid jobs,
free education and health care,
almost no taxation and, of course, cheap fuel.
You know, if you're a Saudi citizen today, since the founding
of the modern Kingdom, we have had continuity and stability.
Now, people in the West take that lightly sometimes,
because they take it as a given.
But your property, your family,
the chance to get educated, the chance to develop.
Push come to shove, you know, they have actually gotten the best
deal of any citizen in the Middle East over the past 100 years.
But there is a new threat to the House of Saud.
A demographic time bomb.
Around two thirds of the population is under 30.
And they are questioning the conservative rule
of the House of Saud.
It is really hard, you feel like you're not a human
and you have no right to even dream.
I'm not allowed to do anything,
I'm not allowed to decide anything for myself.
I'm here just to get married and have babies and just follow rules.
Samah Damanhoori left the Kingdom in 2014.
She now lives in the United States.
So imagine if you're living your whole life like that.
And whenever you dream, whenever you have an opinion,
you're not allowed even to think like that.
This is wrong.
In 2017, a 24-year-old Saudi woman called Dina Ali Lasloom
was believed to be attempting to escape an arranged marriage
by flying to Australia.
But during a stopover at Manila airport,
Philippines authorities detained her.
Fearing her family was coming to force her back to Saudi Arabia,
Dina was filmed pleading with airport officials.
Dina was put on a flight back to Riyadh,
but not before she sent her video appeal to an activist.
Then Moudi Aljohani brought world attention to Dina's plight.
Before Dina had even landed in Saudi Arabia,
#SaveDinaAli had gone viral.
Can you tell us anything about Dina's condition or whereabouts?
The last thing we know is that
she's been held in the girl's detention,
which is another name of women's prison.
Moudi campaigned for Dina,
because she says her own family wanted her to live
under the control of a male guardian
who would decide many aspects of her life.
Moudi went to university in America.
When she returned to Saudi Arabia for a holiday,
she says her family tried to keep her there.
When I went to visit my family,
they said, "You are not going back.
"Because you are being too Americanised."
That was the biggest shock in my life.
And I didn't believe it in the beginning.
And then it became real.
I was a hostage.
I was a prisoner in my own house.
I call it slavery.
Because there is no different than slaves and the guardianship system.
It's modern slavery.
SALSA MUSIC PLAYS
Moudi eventually escaped and fled back to America.
Anybody in my position who tests the freedom for a little bit
and go back to hell, would do the same thing that I did.
Some Saudis are not impressed.
Fahad Nazer is a political consultant
to the Saudi Embassy in Washington DC.
He does not speak on behalf of the Saudi government.
If you listen closely to the grievances,
they almost begin and end with,
unfortunate, I'm sure,
but, you know, nonetheless problems
that stem at their...you know, family issues...
problems stemming, you know, in their households
that they don't reflect.
They have little bearing on wider societal...
or wider society. It's...
Saudi Arabia's supporters claim that many women
back their strict Islamic system.
WOMAN SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE
Samah is no longer a Muslim.
She has also publicly criticised Islam.
I broke a lot of rules in terms of culture and religion.
So it's really, really hard to go back home.
They would lock me up until I get married
to the man that THEY approve, not me.
And I would be always a slave for them.
Samah is seeking asylum in America.
From there, she campaigns for the rights of women back home.
If I do what I am doing right now back home,
they would just simply put me in jail,
they would do whatever to shut me and put me down.
Saudi Arabia's growing young population also faces
economic uncertainty.
The economy is built around oil.
But the fall in oil prices may mean the party is over.
The economy is not working, the economy flat-lined in 2016
and went into recession in 2017.
One third of the reserves that the Saudis had
when King Solomon ascended to the throne had been spent.
And you don't have to have a Masters degree in business to figure out
if you've spent one third in three years, where you're ending up.
Facing these challenges is a new crown prince
who has become the leading figure in the House of Saud.
APPLAUSE
Just 32 years old, Mohammad Bin Salman
has promised to fundamentally transform the Kingdom.
At the heart of his project called Vision 2030
is a promise to modernise the Saudi Arabian economy.
This is a revolution that's going on, this is not a transition.
And it's driven by the recognition
of a need for a revolution in the economy.
They cannot continue the way they have
with oil prices and gas prices
what they are and generally predicted
to continue to be for some time.
Vision 2030 in the long term and on the surface
is an economic diversification strategy,
but it's underpinned by social and cultural reform.
And it also placed woman on the map.
A royal decree has been issued in Saudi Arabia
giving women the right to drive.
APPLAUSE
In 2017, Saudi Arabia became the last country in the world
to allow women to drive.
It was an historic moment for the Kingdom.
It is a very important reform,
because women who are working,
such as teachers, they need to go to their schools on time.
They need to run their affairs.
They need to have freedom of movement.
Social reform is under way. CHEERING
For the first time in decades, cinemas are opening.
Women have been allowed into stadiums.
The feared religious police have been barred from making arrests.
WOMAN SHRIEKS
SHRIEKING
And the male guardianship system under which women need
a man's permission for many activities is also changing.
The woman's guardianship issue has always been a problem, but material
changes already happened to the woman's guardianship.
For example, women now are allowed to go to government departments
and get papers and execute official documents without a guardian,
which is a huge step forward.
But it is only a start.
A mandatory dress code remains in place.
And in some Sharia courts,
a woman's testimony is worth only half a man's.
Women can't leave the country without the permission
of their guardian and this is still practised in Saudi Arabia.
There are certain professions they cannot go into without
the permission of their guardian.
If a woman is employed in the private sector and her job
requires her to travel outside Saudi Arabia, she will not be able to go,
unless her guardian signs a form to say that she can travel for work.
What we've seen so far
is some modest steps in the right direction,
but the scriptures that govern Saudi society,
especially gender relations,
involve thousands of decrees from the clerical establishment.
One estimate is there's up to 30,000 decrees issued
over the years by the Wahhabi clerical establishment
that governs everything about behaviour of women
and the interaction between women and men in the Kingdom.
That's a formidable amount of legislation
that has to be looked into and reversed.
Social and economic liberalisation may be crucial to maintaining
the House of Saud's rule,
but political freedoms are another thing altogether.
SHOUTING
THEY PROTEST
The Arab Spring saw dictators across the Middle East toppled.
SHOUTING ON MEGAPHONE
Protests erupted in Saudi Arabia, too.
Social media exploded, becoming a pivotal tool for activists.
CHANTING
GUNSHOTS
There was, I think, a brief window of time
when the Saudi government was not in control of what their citizens were
saying and able to say, and that was with the emergence of social media.
That really brought about a tremendous opening
in Saudi Arabia, the likes of which we had not seen before.
SHOUTING
But the Saudi government soon woke up to the threat.
RAPID GUNFIRE
After the Arab Spring,
the regime sees itself as very vulnerable.
Any activity is seen by the regime as dangerous,
whether it is somebody making a tweet,
or a post on Facebook, or a post on YouTube.
They try to chase them,
either by using the advanced technology given to the regime
by the West, or by seducing them,
sending agents to speak to them.
So they use the social media itself
to arrest people, to get rid of them.
In 2014, Bill Marczak was an analyst
for Canadian-based research team Citizen Lab.
He uncovered a malicious bug hidden in an app for a newspaper,
popular in the Shia eastern province of Saudi Arabia.
We saw, for instance, on Twitter,
there were a few accounts sending out tweets saying,
"Oh, check out the new version of the Qatif Today app."
And if you had clicked on that and installed that on your phone,
your phone would have been infected
and data would've been sent back to the Saudi Ministry of Interior.
Bill traced the bug back to a hi-tech company that develops
what it calls offensive security.
Italian company Hacking Team has been criticised
for having supplied this kind of mass surveillance technology
to Saudi Arabia.
Alberto Pelliccione is one of the world's foremost hackers.
He worked for Hacking Team
when they used to run this kind of operation.
When I understand which angle I'm going to attack...
Saudi Arabia, in my estimate,
is probably one of the more sophisticated governments
when it comes to surveillance in the Middle East,
and the simple reason is they've got a lot of money,
so this gives them access to surveillance tools
that other governments might not have access to.
You know, I'm sure that Saudi is very interested in fighting
terrorism, but I'm sure also that they're abusing the products
to spy on activists, because, you know, what...
If you are the Saudi government, who are the threats?
Well, the threats are anyone that's kind of threatening your grip
on power and your...your...the stability of your ruling family
and your government.
Social media had been a mixed blessing in Saudi Arabia.
First, it allowed Saudis to access the world
and make their voices heard.
However, there is an unfortunate side to Saudi social media,
and that is a lot of people got in trouble as a result
of circulating ideas, even short sentences on Twitter.
Unlike countries such as China and Turkey,
platforms like Twitter have remained open.
But there is evidence the Saudi government has begun to
manipulate social media in ever more sophisticated ways.
The explosion of the use of social media
does not mean that the regime is silent,
it does not mean the regime is allowing people
to use social media as they want.
It's believed they have the capability to sabotage
online discussions about the Kingdom using propaganda bots.
Bots, essentially, look like real people, but it's software.
It's computer software
that uses social media to look like a real person
and to spread propaganda.
Marc Owen Jones has studied the accounts of Twitter users
in Saudi Arabia.
Half of that information that you see will be propaganda.
And we're talking every day, probably over 100,000 tweets.
It basically means half of the internet Twitter population
of Saudi is computer software.
He says the bots are used for what is called hashtag poisoning -
artificially inflating support for the government position
in a huge, invisible wave of propaganda.
Hashtag poisoning is basically going onto a hashtag,
dominating it,
squeezing out any real, genuine, critical information.
Again, it ties in with the idea of making credible information,
real information, critical information, difficult to find.
And you do it to such an extent that it becomes almost...
Twitter becomes useless as a tool of finding out
what's going on in real time in certain parts of the world.
Criticism of the House of Saud
is also controlled through sweeping anti-terror laws.
Now, in Saudi Arabia, you could be classified as a terrorist
if you spread atheism,
if you attend an international conference
that the State doesn't like,
if you speak to a rights group or an international reporter
in a way that the State thinks is undermining national unity.
One of the terms of the law even said that if you harm
the reputation of the State, you can be classified as a terrorist.
We would hope that the - and we would expect -
that the relevant authorities would be vigilant
in applying these laws
in such a manner that they do not infringe
on the freedom of expression
of peaceful individuals who are not resorting to incitement,
who are not resorting to the encouragement of violence
or anything like that.
SHOUTING
The public has very limited information about the evidence
that's presented, the nature of the crime that is being alleged,
the way in which a conviction is...is reached,
and in that kind of context,
it creates a kind of pervasive feeling of repression,
so it takes a very brave person in Saudi Arabia to speak out
about anything political,
certainly anything that might shed a negative light
on...on the government.
There may have been individual cases, there may have been
individual mistakes, but it is not a common practice in Saudi Arabia.
We're not North Korea, we're not, you know, the Gulags,
we're not anything like that.
We are a peaceful society that is well integrated,
that is well...cohesive
and that has the right to protect itself
and to protect its community against the threat of terrorism.
In January 2016, the Saudi Interior Ministry
announced it had executed 47 people on a single day,
declared guilty of terror offences.
While some of the 47 were convicted of Al-Qaeda-linked terror attacks,
others seem to be simply political protesters.
King Salman wanted to show that he's tough with any kind of dissidence.
The regime claims that they are either terrorists or
sympathisers with terrorists,
but given that the judiciary in Saudi Arabia is not independent,
it is very difficult to verify these claims.
Among those executed was Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr,
a leading cleric from the country's Shia Muslim minority.
Saudi Arabia's Shias have long complained of marginalization
and oppression.
This was a very blunt
and strongly worded message to the Shia community
that this is the consequence of stirring up dissatisfaction,
expressing that in any way.
The consequence is arrest, prosecution, execution.
Taha al-Haji was one of the lawyers
who tried to stop the executions.
The government concocted a case
accusing him of undermining national unity,
and harming the reputation of the State.
SCOFFS: All of which are terrorist offences in Saudi Arabia now.
HE SPEAKS ARABIC
Convicted criminals were executed, simple as that.
They went through the full process of the law,
they went through multiple appeal stages,
and they were convicted of crimes, of terrorism and other crimes,
and they were executed in accordance with the law.
But the image of mass executions plastered across the world's media
caused widespread outrage.
Now the Americans wanted answers about the executions of the 47 men.
The President took it up with the King.
I have to give President Obama a lot of credit, I mean,
he was very forthright in bringing these issues to the forefront,
and the King was very direct with the President, too, in saying,
you know, "We have our customs, we have our judicial system,"
you know, "I have to...
"I may be the King of Saudi Arabia,
"but I have to respect my judicial system."
I think our human rights record is
one of the best in the world,
both internally and in terms of our own systems
and as far as international agreements and covenants.
We uphold the charter, we uphold...
Above that, we uphold our own Sharia law
which protects human rights for all individuals
and which guarantees the dignity
and the responsibility also towards society of all members
of the community. So I have no doubt that we uphold
the highest standards of human rights.
I think Saudi Arabia finds self-analysis
and self-criticism extremely difficult
and extremely painful.
I certainly would not characterise Saudi Arabia as one
of the countries with the best human rights record in the world.
I think the Saudi Arabia record on improving human rights
is extremely disappointing.
I think that the United States and other partners of Saudi Arabia -
the UK, others in Europe - have, for a long time,
addressed with Saudi officials,
our deep and consistent concerns
regarding things like their violation
of freedom of religion and belief,
their use of the death penalty for crimes that do not rise to the
level of the utilisation of the death penalty,
a full panoply of concerns.
And, unfortunately,
I don't think that they've made much progress at all.
There are those in the West, if I may say, who want to mould us
in their own mould, and we say, "Thanks, but no thanks."
We are not Sweden, we are not Switzerland,
we are not Britain, we are not Norway.
We are our own country,
and we do not want to be moulded in the mould of any other country.
The Kingdom's treatment of dissenters is criticised
not just by diplomats and human rights experts,
but also from within the royal family itself.
Prince Khalid bin Faisal Al Saud can trace his family lineage
back to the original founders of the Kingdom.
The Prince is openly critical of how the Saudi Interior Ministry
has cracked down on human rights activists.
Prince Khalid is speaking out
through a sense of personal injustice
over what he claims is the illegal seizure of land he inherited.
He feels the country is deeply corrupt.
The social reforms introduced
by the new Crown Prince, Mohammad bin Salman,
have led to hopes that the human rights situation
in the Kingdom would improve,
but a new terror law he has introduced
includes penalties of up to ten years in jail
for insulting the King and Crown Prince,
as well as the death penalty for other acts of terrorism.
Yahya Assiri is a Saudi human rights activist.
It has definitely had a negative impact on activism,
when you see all the leading figures,
and all human rights defenders
and the respected figures of this movement being behind bars now.
If you dare to speak out about the right,
dare to read about the human rights demand
or express yourself
or your opinion or even contact Amnesty International,
this can be considered a terrorist crime.
The fate of Mujtaba Al-Sweikat
has been seen as a test case for the new regime.
In 2012, he was arrested for attending a demonstration,
when he was just 17 years old.
Mujtaba was a very promising young student.
He had been awarded a place to study at university in the US.
and was actually on his way to the US
when he was arrested from the airport,
brutally tortured by the police,
forced to sign a confession, and
then later sentenced to death for attending a pro-democracy protest.
Mujtaba Al-Sweikat is one of 14 recently sentenced to death
for what human rights organisations describe as protest-related crimes.
His charges include overseeing a dissident Facebook page
and publishing photos of protests.
His case is typical of the kind of death penalty cases
we are seeing now increasingly in the Kingdom.
Those young students, like Mujtaba, are brutally tortured
and sentenced to death for calling for exactly the same things
that the Crown Prince is saying he's in favour of.
The Saudi Ministry of Justice maintains that all the trials
of the 14 Saudis sentenced to death
have met international standards for fairness and due process.
They say the death sentences are only handed down
for the most serious crimes.
Since the Crown Prince came to power,
dozens of people have been detained in what UN experts have called
a worrying clamp-down on human rights.
What we've seen since he took office is...
..certainly an increased use of mass executions.
There were seven people executed on the 28th of November,
among whom a number of those, four of them,
were peaceful protesters.
We're also seeing an attempt to disguise the repression
and abuses of fundamental human rights by the Crown Prince,
disguise it in this guise of countering terrorism.
He's trying to be the ally of the West.
SHOUTING
Repression in Saudi Arabia has never been at the level
of really repressive countries.
It is not a police state in the sense Syria or Iraq was,
even Iran is, frankly.
So, it is not as repressive as really repressive states are,
but obviously, it does not have the political freedom
that the West does.
For political and economic reasons, Western governments have long
tolerated the House of Saud's record on human rights.
I have sat around the Situation Room table
in the West Wing of the White House,
where we've grappled with precisely these issues.
You know, isn't it time that we finally told Country X,
"This is it"?
OK, well, then what?
Well, Country X then goes to Russia, they go to China,
or they go somewhere else, and then we've lost whatever
influence we had, however inadequate it may be.
No country is ever perfect.
Saudi Arabia certainly has its imperfections, its flaws,
but at the end of the day, I would judge that they are a flawed
friend and that others in the region are our adversaries and our enemies.
Few things have focused attention
on the West's support for Saudi Arabia
like the brutal war in Yemen.
The Saudi coalition has been led by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.
The Saudis maintain they are defending
the rightful government of Yemen against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels
who had seized power.
But from the outset, the Saudi-led coalition used
its air superiority to bomb suspected rebels.
Reports emerged of civilians being targeted.
The Saudi government and the rebels have been accused of war crimes.
What we have documented in multiple investigations in Yemen,
on the ground, is that this war has been characterised
by a very widespread and systematic pattern
of indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas,
in some cases deliberate bombardment of civilian areas,
that has killed thousands of civilians.
In 2015, in Geneva,
the head of the UN Human Rights Council
called for an independent international investigation
into war crimes committed by both sides.
But there was a problem.
Saudi Arabia is one of the 47 countries
on the United Nations' Human Rights Council.
Saudi Arabia's effort to seek leadership
in the UN Human Rights Council
came basically at the same time that Saudi Arabia
was putting out an ad to hire more executioners, by sort,
for beheading its citizens,
or ex-pats, who are sentenced to die.
I mean, this is a real contradiction here in terms of,
on the one hand, Saudi Arabia's international legitimacy
and acceptance by, you know,
some of the most prominent leaders in the UN system
while at the same time chopping people's heads off for doing things
that we don't even define as crimes here, in the West.
In terms of why the Saudis want to be on the Human Rights Council,
I think it's very simple -
they want to block any efforts to shine the light on themselves
and some of their other allies
who have horrific human rights records.
Clear and simple. It's not for good reasons.
Keith Harper was the US ambassador to the Council at the time.
I think that countries like Saudi Arabia being
on the Human Rights Council undermines the Council.
And I think it makes it a weaker institution
and it makes it an institution that can be...
..whose veracity can be more greatly questioned.
And I think that that undermines human rights, ultimately,
when countries like Saudi Arabia are on the Human Rights Council.
Saudi Arabia's presence on the UN Human Rights Council
helped block the independent international investigation.
A Yemeni government investigation went ahead instead.
We did not block an independent investigation of the UN.
The norm at the UN is that such investigations are carried
by the competent leader authority of the land.
If that authority is unable or unwilling to conduct
that investigation, then the UN may step in and provide such...
..such an investigation.
SHOUTING
For two years, the bitter war has raged in Yemen,
with the Saudi coalition backed and armed by the British
and American governments.
In October 2016,
a funeral in the Yemeni capital Sana'a was hit by a Saudi jet.
140 were killed, 500 injured.
SHOUTING
We have investigated those cases.
In some of them, we have acknowledged responsibility
and we have taken measures to address
the results of the incident.
We do not deny that there may have been some cases in which errors
have been made, but those who say otherwise are respectfully
requested to present their case to us, and we'll take a look at it.
As the war escalated,
missiles were fired towards Saudi Arabia by Houthi rebels.
A Saudi-led blockade on the main ports of Yemen
has lead to starvation and an outbreak of cholera.
After two years of wrangling,
the United Nations Human Rights Council
has finally passed a resolution -
an independent investigation into war crimes will now be undertaken.
But around 10,000 civilians have already died in Yemen.
For decades, through years of extraordinary global changes,
the House of Saud has offered stability in a volatile region.
But in just a few months,
a 32-year-old Crown Prince has changed all that.
Mohammad bin Salman has pledged to end Islamic extremism.
King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad
have taken dozens and dozens of measures
to crack down on terrorists,
on terrorists cells and terror financing.
They have dismissed thousands of imams and teachers
who espouse extremist views.
He has launched a crackdown on corruption,
with hundreds detained, including ministers, billionaires
and members of his own family.
Well, this is a monumental shift in the way the government is
tackling corruption.
In the past, the government has fought corruption,
but they were always half measures.
What's happening today is that the government is sending
a very clear message, that corruption will not be tolerated,
regardless of who's behind it.
He has begun a process of economic and social reform.
I think there's actually a veritable revolution
in Saudi Arabia right now.
There's a revolution in governance,
the social/religious context,
there's a revolution in the economic sector
that's driving the need for all of these others.
I think now there's leadership, there's decisiveness,
there's determination.
Concrete action has been taken.
May it run over a few people or hit a few potholes? Maybe,
but it's in the right direction.
The Crown Prince's reforms have been welcomed in the West.
But the House of Saud has now entered
a period of unprecedented instability.
There is no sign that the political sphere is opening up
to our new ideas.
In fact, what we have is a regression into a very,
very repressive absolute monarchy
with no freedom of speech whatsoever.
THEY CHANT
The Crown Prince,
he has the Armed Forces,
the security services,
the intelligence services, the police,
everyone under his command.
It reflects a generational change in leadership.
It's risky, it's unprecedented,
and where it will lead, no-one can say.
It is aggressive, it is assertive,
and it is getting itself stuck into some real conundrums in the region.
And all of a sudden, we don't quite know where this goes.
SHOUTING
Saudi Arabia today is at a crossroads.
Its foreign policy has a series of disastrous ventures.
Its economy has flat lined, going into recession.
You can see the perfect storm forming around Saudi Arabia.
A 32-year-old prince now holds the fate of the world's most powerful
family in his hands.
I think we should very much want him, want his country to succeed.
If something happens to Saudi Arabia,
this would be catastrophic for the region
and frankly catastrophic for the world.