Talk:Khalid bin Talal Al Saud

The WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth, re bounty offers

I've just removed this, temporarily, on WP:BLP grounds. It's the truth, but not the WHOLE truth. More emphatically, it badly distorts the truth in that it fails to disclose that the offer was made in response to the offer of a similar "reward", made first, by an Israeli family, for the murder or capture ( sources vary on that ) of a Palestinian who was released in the recent prisoner exchange.

This is a breaking story, and the available facts and exact details aren't clear yet. I am NOT trying to suppress this, and I of course know ( and want ) it back in the article as soon as legitimately possible. We're just obligated to tell the whole truth, and get the facts straight, i.e. not to misrepresent this guy's actions as if they were just unilateral, when they appear rather to have been a response to a provocation from a distraught Israeli family seeking private revenge via a paid assassin or paid kidnapper ... or so some sources are currently reporting, anyway. It'll be interesting to see if major sources come to a consensus on the details over the next couple of days.

Anyway, I'll add links to sources that talk about the exact chain of events as beginning with the bounty offer by the Israeli family below, in a moment, for people to examine.  – OhioStandard (talk) 19:02, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

A "first-cut" attempt at a fair narrative

Okay, the sources I've seen so far differ a quite a bit from each other, in important details, but sequence appears to have taken place as follows, as nearly as I can piece it together:

• After the recent prisoner exchange, an Israeli family offered a bounty of approximately $100,000 ( or was it $1,000,000? details are still emerging ) for the capture ( not execution, I think, or not necessarily(?) ... we'll need to check more carefully, and compare sources as they emerge ) of the person who killed their relative named Shlomo Libman. Shlomo Libman was evidently killed in 1998, and I think the implication at this point is that the person to whom his death is attributed was one of the Palestinian prisoners released in that exchange. The Libman family, as I currently understand the situation, was naturally angry at the Palestinian's release, and decided to use their money to ( in effect ) override and countermand the Israeli governments' decision to release him, by offering a bounty to bring about a private kidnap/capture of the putative killer.

• In apparent response to that bounty offer, Saudi cleric Awad Al-Qarni offers his own bounty of approximately $100,000, for the capture ( definitely not killing ) of any Israeli soldier, with the understanding that any soldier so captured would be used in a subsequent prisoner exchange to try to gain the release of some additional number of the thousands of Palestinians who remain in Israeli prisons.

• The exact wording that Al-Qarni cited on his Facebook page as his justification for offering the bounty is a bit obscure at this point, as best I can tell: Facebook took down his page. The 29 Oct 2011 Reuters story doesn't quote it verbatim, but an earlier 27 Oct 2011 Reuters network story that was published on the news site arabianbusiness.com ( which looks legit at first glance, per WP:RS ) reported the cleric Al-Qarni had written on his Facebook page that, "The media reported the news of the Zionist occupiers paying a huge sum to anyone who killed the freed Palestinian prisoners." The same 27 Oct 2011 Reuters story, via arabianbusiness.com, also says that Qarni is well known in Saudi Arabia for his outspoken views, but is not part of the country's official clerical establishment.

• It's not clear to me from what I see in the sources yet as to whether the Israeli family offered a $100,000 or $1,000,000 bounty for the person they ( and Israeli officials, I presume ) believe killed their family member back in 1998. I mention this again because it touches on the reason our subject offered $900,000, on why he offered that amount in particular, I mean. Some sources I've seen so far say that it was to be combined with the cleric's $100,000 to reach the $1,000,000 amount that may have been offered by the Lidman family. Other sources say that Israeli officials offered a $1,000,000 bounty for the killing or capture of the cleric, Al-Qarni, after his $100K offer. If that was the case, then, as seem to recall reading in still other sources, our subject Prince Khaled bin Talal was matching the price put on Al-Qarni's head.

• Late-edit update added at 20:05, 31 October 2011 (UTC) : Reuters reports that the Prince said, in the same phone call in which he announced his $900,000 offer, that he was offering the money in response to a $1M bounty offered for the killing of cleric Awad al-Qarni, after that Muslim cleric had offered a $100,000 reward for the capture of an Israeli soldier who could then be swapped for Palestinians still being held in Israeli prisons, the cleric having made that offer in response to (two, evidently) offers made previously by Israelis for the capture or killing of Palestinians released in the recent prisoner swap involving Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. As I understand it, the Prince chose the $900,000 amount as a supplement to the cleric's own $100,000 offer, so that the total amount on-offer would equal the price put on the cleric's head.

Anyway, the details are still being investigated and still coming in, evidently, and these early breaking news reports conflict with each other markedly. I'm not sure if I'll have more time in the next couple of days to follow this further, but please do not restore just the bare statement that the Prince is offering a bounty for the capture of Israeli soldiers. While apparently true, by itself it grossly misrepresents the situation by making it appear that this was just some random despicable act that he came up with out of the blue. That would make it a BLP violation, in my opinion, notwithstanding the fact that some Israeli publications ( e.g. Ynet News and Haaretz ) are reporting it that way, i.e. are not reporting the WHOLE truth that evidently led up to the Prince's offer.

I'll have no objection at all, however, if someone else wants to let this settle a bit in the next day or three, and then present as complete an account as can be determined based on ALL the crucially relevant details reported in aggregate by all the reliable sources available. Otherwise I'll try to get back in a few days to do that relatively heavy lifting ( research and comparison of sources ) myself, a task I expect will take 3 - 4 hours to complete with proper care, given the many sources, their conflicts, and the changing details as newer stories on the subject, and updates to old ones, occur.  – OhioStandard (talk) 20:27, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

references:

Added content re bounty offers

Okay, since the story seemed to be settling down a bit, I went ahead and added what I think is a fair and BLP-compliant presentation of this matter. I note that before I added any of that, an editor posted a brief request for additional "eyes on" this article at BLPN, so I added a brief comment there myself, as well. I'll try to check back here for comments, periodically, also.  – OhioStandard (talk) 03:11, 1 November 2011 (UTC)