Canada and Saudi Arabia : Contrasting Tales

"In order for this guy to leave Canada without a passport, it had to be facilitated by the Saudi government, or some government, and there's no reason to believe that any other government would put themselves in this position."
"It's intriguing to me as to why the Saudi government would put up bail and then facilitate his departure from Canada before he had an opportunity to complete the criminal process. This is a foreign government interfering with the criminal process."
Veteran immigration lawyer, Lee Cohen, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Mohammed Zuraibi Alzoabi had $37,500 of his bail posted by the Saudi Arabian embassy last year in relation to the alleged sexual assault, assault and forcible confinement of the woman between Aug. 1, 2015, and March 26, 2017 in Cape Breton.Facebook

A Saudi man charged with sexually assaulting a Cape Breton woman the 28-year-old man is no longer in Canada after having bail in the sum of $37,500 posted for him by the Saudi Arabian embassy last year. Charged with sexual assault, assault and forcible confinement of the woman -- whose name is protected -- between August 2015 and March 2017, the province's prosecution service says Mohammed Zaraibi Alzoabi has absconded. The bail funding was duly forfeited when the man failed to appear in court last Monday.

This Saudi national also faces separate charges of dangerous driving and assault with a car in an incident involving a Cape Breton man that occurred in December of 2015. According to a court document the sheriff attempted on December 8 to track the man down. David Iannetti, his lawyer informed the sheriff that Alzoabi "fled the country some time ago", despite that police had seized his passport. Without a passport it should be impossible to leave the country, yet the impossible occurred, but not without suspicion.

The most conceivable way open to Alzoabi enabling him to leave the country without his passport in hand would logically be if the Saudi embassy saw fit to issue him with travel documents, since airlines boarding passengers without government-issued permission or a passport face heavy fines. The Saudi embassy appears disinterested in committing itself to anything resembling an explanation but it would seem that this kind of occurrence is not unique to Canada, in the Kingdom's interference in the laws of other countries.

A recent report in the Oregonian newspaper detailed last year's flight of Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah, a community college student in Portland, Oregon who jumped bail in the hit-and-run death of a 15-year-old Portland girl, in an apparent similarity to the illegal exit of Alzoabi from Canada evading trial and subsequent penalty for serious criminal acts. In the Oregon case, the malefactor was monitored with a GPS bracelet which had been cut to enable Noorah to leave the U.S. weeks before his trial date.

That same Oregonian reported the results of its own investigation in revealing at least five other criminal cases involving Saudi nationals who managed to disappear before facing trial or completing a state jail sentence. For all the good it will do, Cape Breton Regional Police issued a warrant for Alzoabi's arrest for failing to appear for his trial. Saudi males, it appears, have the complete protection of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia irrespective of any criminal acts they may be involved in abroad.

Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, 18, pauses as she addresses the media during a press conference in Toronto, Canada, on January 15, 2019.

Cole Burston/AFP/Getty Images

In contrast, Canada responded to a social media campaign launched by a female Saudi teen who managed to separate herself from her family while on a holiday in Kuwait when she flew to Bangkok, Thailand, and from there appealed to the international community through Twitter for help in establishing herself elsewhere where she might live a 'normal' life far from Saudi Arabia's male guardianship social-political culture victimizing its female citizens. Now, 18-year-old Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun, rejecting Islam, is prepared to make a new life for herself as a self-aware woman under her own agency.

Mohammed Zuraibi Alzoabi had $37,500 of his bail posted by the Saudi Arabian embassy last year in relation to the alleged sexual assault.  (David Kawai / THE CANADIAN PRESS)