intersecting circles

Bearing in mind yesterday's post about Dmitry Karlik, the Russian immigrant who murdered a family of six that lived across from the Chabad Lubavitch shul in Rishon Letzion, Israel, a case which has "rocked the entire nation" of Israel although good luck finding any news about it, and which is now under the personal jurisdiction of Benjamin Netanyahu and Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch.....

I am going to show you some other things in the news. I don't know if these things are connected. I'm just showing them to you. Circles intersect. Big circles, little circles. They intersect and if you keep looking you can start to see patterns and people in the intersecting circles.

First some background on Chabad Lubavitch and Russia:

While ordinary Chabadniks often describe Vladimir Putin as an evil thug, the Chabad leadership basks in its relationship with him. This contradiction has complex roots.

...In order to assure the choice of Lubavitcher Berel Lazar as Russian Chief Rabbi, Putin worked closely with wealthy Russian Jewish baal tshuvah Lev Leviev and with the Putin-friendly Russian Jewish oligarch Roman Abramovich, who was close to Georgian Jewish Oligarch Badri Patarkatsishvili, who until his death led the opposition to the Neocon-supported Saakashvili regime in Georgia.

...Lubavitchers like many Jewish groups are totally convinced of their moral superiority to non-Jews and rarely feel any remorse or connection to anti-Gentile crimes that arise out of Jewish politics and business practices...

There's much there to read so go take a look. Anyway, the Lev Leviev and diamonds angle gets further pursued here:

Leviev built his enormous fortune trading diamonds with Apartheid-era South Africa. His company mines diamonds in partnership with the repressive Angolan government. New York Magazine reported in 2007 that in Angola, “A security company contracted by Leviev was accused… of participating in practices of ‘humiliation, whipping, torture, sexual abuse, and, in some cases, assassinations.’” Also, according to the diamond industry watchdog Partnership Africa Canada, Angola and Leviev have failed to fully comply with the Kimberley Process.

...Leviev runs a global commercial empire that includes: Leviev Group of Companies; Lev Leviev Diamonds; Africa-Israel (commercial real estate in Prague and London); Gottex (swimwear) Company; 1,700 Fina gas stations in the Southwest U.S.; 173 7-Elevens in New Mexico and Texas; a 33% stake in Cross Israel Highway (Israel’s first toll road); and more. Leviev partner Arcady Gaydamak, an arms dealer, also reportedly works with Danny Yatom, a former MOSSAD (Israeli secret service) chief and security advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Leviev is connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and to Sandline International, a U.K./South African mercenary firm operating in the war-torn areas of Eastern Congo and Uganda.

...Diamonds are Israel’s top export. In 2005 figures, exports to the EU totaled $10.7 billion in 2004, including $2.5 billion in diamonds (23.3%); exports to the US totaled $14.2 billion in 2004, including $7.3 billion in diamonds (51.4%); exports to Asia totaled $7.1 billion in 2004, including $3.2 billion in diamonds (45.0%); exports to the rest of the world totaled $6.6 billion in 2004, including $800 million in diamonds (12.1%).

...Millions of blood diamonds from past and current wars remain locked in the vaults of the Belgian, Russian, New York, London and Israeli diamond bourses to insure the artificially high, monopoly-fixed, prices of diamonds.

And, of course, Lev Leviev and the Chabad Lubavitch are connected, too. In fact he was the guest speaker at the International Conference of Chabad Shluchim in November 2007.

http://lubavitch.com/news/article/2021012/Interview-Lev-Leviev-Guest-Speaker-at-International-Conference-of-Chabad-Shluchim.html

Israel takes the long vision and stakes its claim on the next generation of Forbes millionaires if it ensures that the Jewish child in Rio or in Rome has a healthy Jewish identity, says the Chairman of Africa Israel Investments, an international holding and investment company valued in the billions. When this child later succeeds in business, chances are he’ll invest in Israel before he does so anywhere else.

Lev Leviev, one of eight children, was born in 1956, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to Avner and Chana Leviev, prominent members of the Bukharan Jewish community.

In 1971 his family emigrated from Uzbekistan to Israel, where Lev attended the Chabad yeshiva, and soon turned to polishing diamonds. Today, he is on Forbes’s richest in-the-world list, and one of the leading philanthropists of Jewish education through the worldwide Chabad network.

And from the Q&A:

Q. What, in your opinion, is the greatest problem that plagues the Jewish people today?

Assimilation.

So here are the main circles: Chabad, Russia, Israel, Lev Leviev, diamonds...

Now other topics of interest lately around here have included Saudi Arabia and Thailand, and those circles intersect with other circles, among them Israel, intelligence agencies, corruption, and child trafficking. But meanwhile it turns out that Saudi Arabia and Thailand intersect very specifically: they have been in a diplomatic kerfuffle over some stolen jewelry, particularly a blue diamond, and a few dead diplomats, for about 20 years now. Allright???

Does any of this link back to Russia, Chabad and diamonds? Who knows. But if it did, do you think anyone with any authority will point that out? Ha haahahahahah. That's the trouble. The circles might intersect but unless somebody takes the time to lay the circles on top of each other so you can see where they overlap, or even just touch, it's all just random coincidences, in isolation, signifying nothing. And furthermore, anyone pointing out such suspicious coincidences is known as a "conspiracy theorist." hahahhahahaha. Too much fun. With a little money and power, you can get away with murder!

Let's take a look. Today the Bangkok Post reported:

The South Bangkok Criminal Court on Wednesday rejected the prosecution's application that declare a Saudi businessman who has not been seen since 1990 a legally missing person.

The petition was filed with the court on Sept 2 this year at the request of the Department of Special Investigation to clear the way for the businessman's family to manage his assets.

The court denied the request on the grounds the prosecution had only one witness, Pol Lt-Col Benjapol Chanthawan, a DSI expert on special cases, who testified that Mohammad al-Ruwaili came to live in Thailand to run a business in 1985 and had disappeared on Feb 12, 1990.

...The petitioner also did not produce any important witnesses, such as the missing man's wife or relatives, to confirm to the court that al-Ruwaili had disappeared.

...Also, there were no documents to confirm that al-Ruwaili had not left the country. The only document submitted to the court was a copy of the police complaint that the businessman was missing.

Additional details from September:

Mohammad al-Ruwaili, a shareholder in the job placement firm Sincere International Recruitment Co, has been presumed dead since February 1990.

The man and his wife came to Thailand five years before he went missing. They rented a room at Sriwattana Apartment in soi Yen Akas, in Yannawa district of Bangkok, and ran the job placement firm.

The missing man was seen in a car with Saudi consul Abdullah al-Besri on Feb 12, 1990, and was reported missing three days later.

His car was found abandoned in the Bangkok Christian Hospital's parking lot.

The consul was murdered after he was seen with al-Ruwaili.

It was widely suspected that al-Ruwaili was kidnapped by police investigating the Saudi consul's murder, and that he was tortured and later killed by his captors to cover up their brutal actions.

The businessman's disappearance and the consul's murder followed the killing of three other Saudi diplomats were in separate shootings on Feb 1, 1989. One of the diplomats, Saleh Abdullah al-Maliki, third secretary at the Saudi embassy in Bangkok, was shot dead in front of his home in soi Pipat 1.

And before that, in August, a new lead all of a sudden:

Abu Ali, where are you? The "Arab man" - the description given by the Department of Special Investigation - is being sought by the DSI for suspected involvement in shooting to death a Saudi Arabian diplomat 19 years ago.

Less than a year before the cases hit the 20-year statute of limitations on investigations, the name of Abu Ali came out of nowhere on Wednesday as a new suspect. [This important development was also reported in The Nation. -ed.]

...Since the murder case, Thailand has had 12 prime ministers, starting with Gen Prem Tinsulanonda at the time to Abhisit Vejjajiva, and 11 police chiefs (make it 12 in October after police commander Pol Gen Patcharawat Wongsuwon retires next month). For Saudi Arabia, the name of the interior minister has not changed over the past two decades. Back then it was Prince Nayef. Today it is till the same prince.

Thailand officials...elevating foot-dragging to an art form. Perhaps the only people better at foot-dragging are the Israelis working on "peace" with the Palestinians. But that is just an observation that Thailand and Israel seem to share certain characteristics like brazen corruption and insularity.

This is what happened to kick the whole thing off:

In 1989, Kriangkrai Techamong, a Thai employee working in a Saudi Royal household, stole about US$20 million worth of jewelry, including an infamous Blue Diamond, and shipped the goods to Bangkok [in a crate of apples - ed.] before boarding his own flight back home.

When three Saudi diplomats were sent to Thailand to solve the case, they were gunned down, and a Saudi businessman was kidnapped and killed. The Saudis had enough and banished all Thai workers.

That did not deter Thai authorities or the league of involved officials in the theft, distribution, resale and subsequent shipment of the jewels after they were recovered – sort of, back to Saudi Arabia. However, 75 percent of the returned jewelry turned out fake including the Blue Diamond.

Anyone can flip up the popular online video site YouTube and see where at least someone thinks the Blue Diamond is, but Thai authorities claim not to know. It may be gone forever. But the case lingers on. [I can't find the video. -ed]

The Saudi gems, diplomats and murdered businessman cases take an even more bizarre tone when one engages in conjecture over why Saudi Arabia has mellowed a bit over time even though the jewels have not been located nor the murderers caught. One theory is the Gulf rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, wherein the Saudi kingdom finds Iran’s growing influence in Thailand a disadvantage to its relations with Thailand.

So it seems that corrupt police in Thailand got the jewels, transferred them to safer hands, and murdered the Saudis sent to investigate. Serious business.

One person believed to know what happened is Chalor Kerdthes. This story is from April 2008:

Justice Minister Sompong Amornwiwat on Thursday paid a visit to Bangkok's Klong Prem Prison, where Police Lieutenant General Chalor Kerdthes, a key player in the Saudi jewelry case, has been an inmate for the past 14 years.

Chalor, a former deputy commissioner of the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) who was put in charge of the Saudi case in 1990, is serving a life-sentence for the abduction and murder of the wife of Santi Srithanakhan, a Thai gem trader who was believed to be involved in the disappearance of Saudi Prince Faisal's jewelry including a "priceless" Blue Diamond in 1989.

Apparently that didn't pan out. Last month a Chalor received a death sentence:

Thailand's Supreme Court yesterday upheld a death sentence for a former senior policeman who abducted and murdered a gem merchant's wife and son as he investigated the theft of Saudi royal jewellery. Ex-police commissioner Chalor Kerdthes was convicted of the abduction and murder in 1994 of the family members of Santi Srithanakhan, who had bought some of the jewellery stolen in a notorious heist from a Saudi prince's palace. The prosecution argued that Chalor abducted the pair to pressure the merchant into revealing the whereabouts of the lavish gems, worth $20 million.

Now for some circles:

Thailand belongs – beside Israel – to the few countries on earth that can afford to have no full diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. Most readers won’t be aware why Thailand ostracizes Saudi Arabia. Wait, it’s the other way round. Saudi Arabia is still waiting for justice. Prime Minister Abhisit wants to draw a line under the decades old case and normalize relations with the Saudis. After 19 years – finally? – an arrest warrant is issued. The whole saga began in 1989, in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

More precisely, in the palace of Prince Faisal, son of King Fahd. The palace employed a Thai house servant, Kriangkrai Taechamong, whose job included cleaning the room where the Prince and his family stored their jewels. Well, those jewels went missing and soon it turned out that they had been distributed among some influential people at the top of Thai society. At parties and receptions some of those missing jewels were seen in Thai cleavages. And many of these people would not stop at killing to protect themselves.

Riiight. So they're not missing, exactly. It's just that whoever has them does not want to return them. And they are not too worried seeing that this has gone on for twenty years. Who are these "influential people at the top of Thai society" who can wear the notorious stolen jewels in public and thumb their noses at Saudi Arabia? And how could it be that Saudi Arabia couldn't do a workaround in all these years. I mean it's not like the Saudis are little lambs. There's got to be something else going on here in the power equation. And wouldn't we love to know. Here are some tidbits from a timeline:

1990 - "At a gala dinner in Bangkok soon after the incident, wives of the Thai generals and leading politicians fiercely competed in showing off their jewelry. The Thai newspapers' photographers caught pictures showing diamond necklaces belonging to the Saudi royal family. The pictures were shown to Saudi officials who also confirmed its similarity. The Thai ladies, however, denied their authenticity." (Another?) sighting of the jewels is alleged to have occurred at a Red Cross event (date unspecified).

3/2008 - "Two Muslim experts" who have a good relationship with Saudi Arabia appointed to serve as advisors to DSI investigators in charge of the cases.

late 2008 - SDI Director Thawee reports that 90 percent of the investigation has been completed.

anonymous comment - The timeline is missing the various instances where XXX XXXXX wore the Blue Diamond in public.

Somebody has to hold the bag while the ladies wear those jewels.

Staff at the Saudi embassy and some outsiders were suspects but the court dropped all charges against them. Pol Col Tawee said DSI officials believed the murders could have resulted from conflicts between Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East.

Judging by their "theories," the DSI investigators would appear to have ruled out the possibility that the murders of the Saudi diplomats had some connection with the efforts of the Saudi diplomats to investigate the theft of the jewels (There is little doubt that the jewels were stolen by the police). By the sound of it, the Thai police are off the hook for these murders.

I've read several comments on discussion boards, etc. to the effect that "everyone" knows who has the blue diamond but amazingly nobody will speak the name. Allegedly the former prime minister's wife has been seen wearing it. Yet the cone of silence surrounds it.

And the circles continue intersecting. They connect to the economic crisis, to Iran, to the WTO.... they just go on and on like ripples across a festering swamp.