Word: faisal
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After a remarkable reign, Faisal died at a time when his prestige throughout the Arab world was at a peak. In the past, many Arab radicals had savagely attacked him as a reactionary, tyrannical ruler of a feudal desert kingdom. But all that changed after Faisal dramatically imposed the oil embargo in October 1973. The Cairo daily al Gumhouriya, once a vehicle for anti-Faisal propaganda campaigns, observed last week: "The Arab nation can never forget his heroic stand during the October war, or that he launched the oil battle in support of the fighters in Sinai and the Golan...
...first hours after Faisal's assassination, there was confusion and uncertainty as to precisely what had happened in Riyadh. The official Saudi announcement had described the assassin, Prince Faisal ibn Musaed, as "mentally deranged." Inevitably there were rumors at the outset that the murder might have been part of a conspiracy to overthrow the House of Saud and with it one of the world's last remaining absolute monarchies. Only six years ago, Faisal had uncovered a plot by a number of his own air force officers; the conspiracy was apparently so widespread that some 60 officers were...
...available evidence, the assassination seemed almost certainly to have been the act of one man. At week's end Prince Faisal was being held in a Riyadh prison; if he is judged mentally competent, he will probably be executed by decapitation, according to Saudi tradition. Reports from California and Colorado, where the prince had been a university student, described him as a quiet, likable, notably unstudious young man who had once been arrested in Boulder for selling LSD and hashish. To his blonde former girl friend, sometime Movie Actress (Bite of the Co bra) Christine Surma, 26, an ambitious...
...become interested in radical Arab politics while studying abroad. Acquaintances noted that his brother Prince Khalid had been killed by Saudi police nine years ago while leading a demonstration of religious zealots against a television station in Riyadh.* There were also stories that the prince was angry with King Faisal because he had been refused permission to live abroad on account of his dissolute ways. Inevitably, radical newspapers in some Arab capitals implied that the prince had been a tool of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agen cy. In light of Washington's well-documented concern for keep ing King...
Barely 24 hours after King Faisal's death, his successor was installed as Saudi Arabia's fourth monarch. In a large, incense-filled hall in Riyadh's royal palace, princes and Cabinet ministers, religious leaders and Bedouin chiefs gathered for the ceremony of mubaya 'a to kiss King Khalid 's face and shoul der and swear allegiance to him. Soldiers and bodyguards in red-and-white kaffiyehs held back the crowd; at one point, the new King thrust himself into the throng to lead forward a blind old man who had come to greet...