An American prosecutor landed in Saudi Arabia and found himself whisked to a royal palace, then directed to a seat next to King Abdullah.

Beneath the gold-encrusted ceiling in the throne room, John Suthers began defending Colorado’s prosecution of a Saudi national convicted of sexually abusing a live-in housekeeper who slept on a mattress in his basement.

The king suspected the case was rooted in anti-Muslim bias and it fell to Suthers, then Colorado’s attorney general, to explain the U.S. justice system.

The encounter more than 13 years ago illustrates not only the kingdom’s longstanding interest in protecting its citizens, but also sheds light on the lengths the Saudis will go on behalf of their people facing criminal charges in the U.S.

The Oregonian/OregonLive has identified more than a dozen times Saudis in Oregon and elsewhere have skipped the country in recent years while facing criminal prosecution. Most, like the Colorado case of Homaidan al-Turki, involve sex crimes. Some defendants vanished before trial, including those who had surrendered their passports to U.S. authorities.

The Colorado prosecution stands out from those examined by The Oregonian/OregonLive because al-Turki didn’t disappear but faced trial and was convicted. Yet the diplomatic pressure afterward highlights common themes in all of these cases: Saudi concerns that U.S. courts won’t give them a fair shake and the kingdom’s starkly different view of justice and what constitutes a crime.

The Saudis have acknowledged a policy to post bail for citizens incarcerated in the U.S. and to hire a lawyer for them. In Colorado, news accounts reported that the kingdom posted $400,000 bail for al-Turki.

Federal law enforcement officials suspect the kingdom went further in one instance and helped one of its citizens, a young man studying in Portland, to flee before his 2017 manslaughter trial.

Much about the recent cases remains unknown and they’re now the subject of a federal investigation. The Colorado episode, however, is documented in public records. The Oregonian/OregonLive also interviewed key players who detailed the kingdom’s role.

The Saudis’ more hands-on approach differs from the typical U.S. government response of a “health and welfare check” when an American gets arrested in a foreign country, said Robert Jordan, who served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2001 until 2003.

“This is a pattern we have seen over the years,” Jordan said.

During his diplomatic tenure, Jordan said he didn’t see signs of Saudi interference in criminal cases, but the kingdom was highly engaged in custody disputes involving the children of Saudi men.

“There were a number of instances in which the Saudis appeared to be helping Saudi fathers abduct children in contested custody disputes with American mothers,” Jordan said.

Saudi involvement in the lives of its citizens overseas is no surprise to those who have studied the kingdom.

“The Saudi government goes out of its way to protect its citizens,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an authority on Middle East policy and national security. “They do so by essentially ignoring their crimes and the laws in the nation in which these crimes take place.”

‘I WAS TO DEFEND THE AMERICAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM’

Homaidan Al-Turki, 50, a linguist who owned a publishing business in the Denver area, had lived in the U.S. for more than a decade when he was convicted in 2006 of charges related to his abuse of an Indonesian housekeeper he brought to the U.S. He received eight years to life in prison.

Saudi royals knew of the case and worried that in the years after 9/11 their citizens in America wouldn’t get equitable treatment if they got in trouble. The government even filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that al-Turki’s trial was driven by suspicion and intolerance of Muslims.

The kingdom said it wanted to ensure that its citizens, including tens of thousands of students attending American colleges and universities, “receive a fair trial when prosecuted in the U.S. and, in particular, that they do not suffer bias because they are Arabs or Muslims.”

The U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia at the time, James Oberwetter, said he doesn’t recall if Saudi religious leaders or al-Turki’s family were the first to question the case.

But at some point the king brought it up during a private conversation with Oberwetter.

Abdullah told the diplomat, an appointee of President George W. Bush, that he thought the prosecution stemmed from al-Turki’s efforts to preach Islam in the U.S.

“And as I listened to him tell the story,” Oberwetter said, “it seemed very clear to me that the king had not been well served by whomever had presented the facts of this case to him.”

So Oberwetter called Colorado’s then-Gov. Bill Owens to ask if he’d send a representative to the kingdom to explain the U.S. justice system to government officials.

The governor asked Suthers to go.

“I didn’t want another country, whether it’s Germany or France or Saudi Arabia to think that we were going after their national in a case like this,” Owens recalled in a recent interview.

Suthers agreed to make the trip. Before taking off, he met with the prosecutor on the case and the FBI. He declined to discuss what federal agents said but remembered it was clear they were nervous that Saudis would pressure the U.S. government to send al-Turki home.

“Well, that’s not in my power,” Suthers said he told them. “Only the governor can do that.”

“We agreed that would be my position if the topic was brought up,” he said.

“From my perspective, I was to defend the American criminal justice system and I was perfectly willing to do that.”

‘WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?’

Suthers was a natural choice to explain federal and state laws given his background.

Before becoming attorney general, he’d served as U.S. attorney for Colorado and district attorney for Colorado Springs. Before he took off for Saudi Arabia, he read up on the state’s case, which had hinged on the victim’s account.

About a week after getting the call, Suthers was in Riyadh.

He assumed he would meet with Saudi diplomats but instead was escorted to the palace of King Abdullah within hours of touching down.

American diplomats explained the protocol to meet with the king.

“You are going to meet him in one of the sitting rooms,” he remembers being told. “The king is going to come from his throne, meet you at midpoint, cameras will be there at that time. Don’t stop and stare at the ceiling -- because it’s all gold -- you’ll be sitting in a chair next to the throne.”

Suthers took his seat and, through a translator, listened to the monarch.

“Basically, I’ve got a problem,” Suthers recalled the king saying.

“He said, ‘I have this very strident -- not his word, my word -- segment that is angry about this case and you coming over here shows a lot of respect and I appreciate that,’” Suthers recounted.

The king was puzzled that al-Turki hadn’t testified in his own defense. He was curious, too, about reports that other women had alleged al-Turki had sexually assaulted them.

During the meeting, Abdullah didn’t ask the U.S. to return al-Turki to Saudi Arabia, Suthers said.

He then met with Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz whose interest in the case appeared to center on the victim’s background.

“What’s the big deal?” Suthers recalled the crown prince saying.

It was a common reaction in Saudi Arabia, Suthers said.

“I’ll tell you everyone in Saudi Arabia referred to her as an illiterate Indonesian maid,” he said. “In fact, she spoke five languages or something like that and she obviously was very convincing because the jury found beyond a reasonable doubt that he had committed these offenses.”

A 2017 Human Rights Watch report says Saudi Arabia is home to an estimated 10 million foreign workers. Sexual and physical abuse and exploitation of domestic workers aren’t uncommon, noted the report, which said some workers who tried to report abuse faced prosecution.

Last year, an Indonesian domestic worker convicted of killing her employer was executed by Saudi Arabia. According to an organization that assists Indonesians working abroad, the woman acted in self-defense because the employer was sexually assaulting her.

In general, Islamic law as practiced in Saudi Arabia gives prosecutors wide discretion in how they pursue criminal cases like rape. Prosecutions can involve confessions and male witness accounts as standards of proof, said Adam Coogle, a Saudi expert at Human Rights Watch, the international advocacy network based in New York.

He said the kingdom is notorious for coercing confessions from criminal suspects. Penalties for rape can include death; human rights watchdogs report two to three executions a year for the crime on average, Coogle said.

In the Colorado case, Suthers said he told al-Turki’s brother and other relatives that the victim’s testimony was “very consistent.”

“And I explained to everyone throughout, that look, the issue in America is not how poor or the education level or anything of the victim.

“The issue is after all the evidence is in, is the jury convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime has been committed?”

Al-Turki’s brother asked the U.S. government to allow al-Turki to serve his sentence in Saudi Arabia, a decision Suthers said wasn’t his to make.

Suthers said he returned home a week later.

Oberwetter, the U.S, ambassador, said he wasn’t directly asked by anyone in the Saudi government to transfer al-Turki to Saudi Arabia to complete his sentence.

The diplomat said Abdullah seemed pleased with American efforts to defend the prosecution, but he sensed the king wasn’t entirely satisfied.

“I gleaned there was still suspicion that the arrest came because the man had been proselytizing,” Oberwetter said.

‘HE’S NOT A HAPPY CAMPER’

Another seven years passed before Suthers heard about the case again.

This time, an aide to Owens’ successor, then-Gov. John Hickenlooper, called.

Al-Turki had exhausted his appeals and his lawyers were lobbying the governor to send him home, Suthers said.

Suthers, who today serves as mayor of Colorado Springs, recalled that the aide said Hickenlooper planned to leave the decision up to the Colorado Department of Corrections director, Tom Clements.

“If you have any objection to this,” Suthers recalled the aide saying, “you need to call Clements.”

So Suthers did.

Suthers told the prisons chief that he didn’t think the Saudis would do much in the way of punishing al-Turki.

“I don’t think you should reward him,” Suthers recalls saying. “I can’t believe that imprisonment in Saudi Arabia is going to be very burdensome.”

Colorado officials ultimately decided not to return al-Turki to Saudi Arabia.

Within days, Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., was on the line. (Al-Jubeir is a longtime Saudi official who rose from translator to ambassador, then foreign minister. Late last year, he was removed as foreign minister and named minister of state for foreign affairs.)

“What’s the problem here?” al-Jubeir asked, according to Suthers.

Suthers said he told al-Jubeir that al-Turki had refused to take part in mandatory sex offender treatment and that he would likely be denied parole for failing to participate.

The call was cordial, Suthers said, but the ambassador’s disappointment was obvious.

“He’s not a happy camper,” Suthers said. “I am sure he’s under a lot of pressure.”

In a disturbing development, the state prisons director was shot to death at his home the following week.

Authorities believe Clements was killed by an ex-con with white supremacist prison gang ties. The suspect died in a shootout with police.

Al-Turki’s name has swirled around the Clements case given the timing of the official’s death. But the Saudi was never charged with the killing and his lawyers deny he was involved.

Today, al-Turki remains in prison. At one point, he was transferred to a federal prison in Pennsylvania.

He has previously been denied parole because of his refusal to participate in sex offender treatment; in all, al-Turki has been denied parole a half-dozen times, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections.

Al-Turki didn’t respond to a letter requesting a phone interview. A Denver magazine, 5280, examined the al-Turki case last year, noting that the Saudi hasn’t spoken to American reporters since his conviction. A lawyer who represented him declined to comment on the case.

Al-Turki is eligible to apply for parole again in May, according to Colorado authorities.

For his part, Oberwetter, the former ambassador, said he was struck by the recent reporting on the number of Saudis who have left the U.S. before their criminal cases are resolved.

“If the Saudis are involved in all of this,” said Oberwetter, “they need to be brought up quite short.”

Staff writer Shane Dixon Kavanaugh contributed to this report.

-- Noelle Crombie

503-276-7184

ncrombie@oregonian.com

@noellecrombie

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