Saudi Arabia has threatened Canada with a 9/11-style attack if they don’t stop publicly criticizing the country’s horrific human rights record.
Saudi state media tweeted a graphic on Monday, showing an Air Canada airliner flying toward the Toronto skyline in an image that mirrored the September 11, 2001, twin towers attack.
The graphic read, “Sticking one’s nose where it doesn’t belong! As the Arabic saying goes: ‘He who interferes with what doesn’t concern him finds what doesn’t please him.'”
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Businessinsider.com reports: Last week, Global Affairs Canada tweeted that it was “gravely concerned” about a new wave of arrests in the kingdom targeting women’s rights activists and urged their immediate release.
Now deleted, here a screenshot of the threatening Saudi "infographic" featuring an airliner headed for the Toronto skyline. pic.twitter.com/LrkCLxxjFk
— Tobias Schneider (@tobiaschneider) August 6, 2018
Saudi Arabian citizens comprised 15 of the 19 hijackers that crashed planes on September 11. The attacks’ organizer, Osama Bin Laden, came from a prominent Saudi family and still has family there including a son who the Bin Ladens say is looking to avenge his father.
Saudi Arabia has already expelled Canada’s ambassador and frozen all new trade and investment with Ottawa in response to the criticism.
The tweet came from @Infographic_ksa, an account that had just hours before tweeted another infographic titled “Death to the dictator” featuring an image of the supreme leader of Iran, Saudi’s main regional rival.
Saudi Arabia has long stood accused of funding radical Muslim Imams around the world and spreading a violent ideology called Wahabbism. Under the new leadership of young ruler Mohammad Bin Salman, Saudi Arabia has undertaken a number of sweeping reforms looking to reduce the funding for and spread of radical ideology as well as elevate human rights.
But a surge of arrests apparently targeting prominent women’s rights activists who previously campaigned to abolish the country’s driving ban against women has caused international alarm and prompted the tweet from Canada.
Saudi Arabia deleted the tweet featuring the plane and later reuploaded one without the airliner pictured.
