New Saudi king orders lavish payout to state employees

January 31, 2015

Riyadh, Jan 31: Saudi Arabia's new King Salman ordered a lavish payout to all state employees on Thursday and reshuffled some top government jobs while keeping in place the oil, foreign, finance, defence and interior ministers.

The top oil exporter will pay two months of bonus salary to all state employees and pension to retired government workers, he said in a series of decrees read aloud on state television a week after Salman succeeded his brother Abdullah as king.

He removed two of the late king's sons from big jobs, making Faisal bin Bandar Riyadh governor instead of Turki bin Abdullah and reinstating Khaled al-Faisal as Mecca governor less than two years after he was replaced by Mishaal bin Abdullah.

The two jobs are usually held by senior princes and have sometimes been stepping stones to higher positions.

In a possible indication of Salman's approach to social reform, he also replaced several top religious officials, removing two clerics known as comparative liberals who headed the Justice Ministry and Religious Police.

He also appointed Mohammed Jadaan, a lawyer, as the new head of the Capital Market Authority, the state regulator for the stock market which will open to direct foreign participation later this year.

He kept in place veteran Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, Finance Minister Ibrahim Alassaf and Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal. The Labour, commerce, transport and economy and planning ministers were also kept unchanged.

He appointed new ministers of agriculture, education and information and a new head of the intelligence services.

He also merged the education ministry and higher education ministry and abolished the Supreme Council for Petroleum and Minerals Affairs, replacing it with a new body, according to the text of a royal decree read out on state television.

The king, who took power a week ago after Abdullah's death early on Friday morning, also kept in place the late king's son Miteb as Minister of the National Guard, an important strategic post.

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UN condemns Israeli regime’s ‘organized torture’ against Palestinians

News Network

November 30,2025

The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) has condemned the Israeli regime for enforcing a policy of “organized torture” against Palestinians.

In a report published on Friday, CAT stated that the occupying regime enforces a deliberate policy of “organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” against Palestinian abductees, particularly since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

The committee expressed “deep concern over repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, water-boarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence” inflicted on Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners were degraded by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on,” systematically denied medical care, and subjected to excessive restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation,” the report added.

CAT also condemned the routine application of “unlawful combatants law” to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

More than 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian and international human rights groups, with 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention,” meaning they are imprisoned without trial for indefinite periods.

The report highlighted the “high proportion of children who are currently detained without charge or on remand,” noting that while Israel sets the age of criminal responsibility at 12, even younger children have been abducted.

Children designated as security prisoners face severe restrictions on family contact, may be subjected to solitary confinement, and are denied access to education, in clear violation of international law.

The committee further suggested that Israel’s policies across the Occupied Territories constitute collective torture against the Palestinian population.

“A range of policies adopted by Israel in the course of its continued unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading living conditions for the Palestinian population,” the report said.

On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the systematic killing and torture of Palestinian abductees in Israeli prisons, urging international action to halt these abuses.

Citing human rights data, Hamas stated that 94 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since the start of Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This reflects an organized criminal approach that has turned these prisons into direct killing grounds to eliminate our people,” the resistance movement said.

Hamas called on the international community, the UN, and human rights organizations to immediately pressure Israel to end crimes against prisoners and uphold their rights as guaranteed by all international conventions and norms.

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