Prince Charles in Saudi Arabia

"A major-staging post on the tour is Saudi Arabia, where torture remains rife, and which Charles has visited a lot over the years. As has been widely reported, this week the Saudis publicly executed seven men for theft. All were in their early twenties; two were minors when the crimes were committed. Clarence House says airily that it’s not going to bother to raise this, as the main aims of the Saudi visit are to promote inter-faith dialogue and plug British 'exports' – that is, mainly, arms. The £43 billion al-Yamamah arms deal continues, as do UK training programmes for Saudi military and police personnel, who were deployed to put down rebellion in Bahrain in 2011. In 2010 the UK granted arms export licences worth £110 million to Saudi, for items such as tear gas and small arms – maybe those used to shoot the seven on Monday, whose trial has been widely condemned as unfair, with confessions extracted under torture. Those men, the Bahraini rebels, and Shia prisoners tortured by the Wahhabi regime, are but eggs to be cracked in the making of the great anti-terrorism and pro-export omelette."