MANAMA: The ‘crooked Hillary’ tag has taken on a whole new dimension after revelations of the former US Secretary of State’s links to Qatar and explosive attempts to interfere in Bahrain’s internal affairs were unveiled.
As reported in yesterday’s GDN and our sister newspaper Akhbar Al Khaleej, the US State Department disclosed correspondence to Hillary Clinton during the term of former President Barack Obama.
The disclosure came after President Donald Trump announced recently the declassification of all documents related to federal investigations into her use of a private server for government emails.
Amongst the most shocking revelations the leaked letters confirmed, was the incident of the late former Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal slamming down the phone in Clinton’s face after she asked Riyadh not to send Saudi forces to Bahrain in 2011.
The Peninsula Shield forces included 1,200 Saudi and 800 Emirati soldiers, and their role was limited to securing and guarding strategic facilities during the unrest.
The latest revelations have been picked up by international media outlets with headlines such as ‘The Hillary Clinton emails: How Saudi Arabia survived conspiracies’ but Clinton’s murky links with Qatar have been well documented.
Four years ago international Press agency Reuters’ New York office reported that the Clinton Foundation had confirmed it accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was US Secretary of State without informing the State Department, even though she had promised to let the agency review new or significantly increased support from foreign governments.
According to the foundation’s website, which listed donors in broad categories by cumulative amounts donated, Qatar’s government has directly given a total of between $1m and $5m over the years.
Asked whether Qatar was funding a specific programme at the foundation, its spokesman Brian Cookstra said the country supported the organisation’s ‘overall humanitarian work’.
The latest leaked letters mentioned that Clinton and her team talked about establishing a huge media network to support the Muslim Brotherhood with Qatar’s support.
The letters indicated that the former US Secretary of State, during a visit to Doha, enjoyed meeting leaders of the Al Jazeera Channel network and talked to them for hours.
Clinton’s visits to Doha included private meetings with the Qatari network’s director general Waddah Khanfar.
This was followed by a meeting with members of the board of directors at the channel’s headquarters, in which the network’s Qatari leadership participated.
The hashtag #Emails_hillary has been trending in the Arab world. One Twitter user said: “It has been proven to everyone that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has withstood all the conspiracies and intrigues that have been hatched against it and against the Arab countries.
The kingdom was an impregnable dam and a fortress for Arabs and Muslims.”
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