A university student from Saudi Arabia facing criminal charges in Ohio vanished in 1988, new evidence that the Saudi government intervened decades before it took similar action in several cases The Oregonian/OregonLive recently uncovered in Oregon.

Abdulrahman Ali Al-Plaies was accused of causing a fiery car crash that killed a 79-year-old woman in the center of Xenia, a small Ohio town. The Saudi government immediately began pressing for his release, records show. Then, just days before his trial, a judge inexplicably cut his bail by half, and the Saudi embassy put up the cash.

The young man walked out of jail the same day with a Saudi military officer. He got into a car and was never seen in this country again.

For 30 years, the episode has troubled Stephen Wolaver, the attorney assigned to prosecute Al-Plaies.

“I can only describe this case as justice delayed, if not denied, by a foreign government,” Wolaver, now a trial court judge in Greene County, said in a recent interview.

Together with five Oregon disappearances, the cases suggest the Saudi government has spent decades helping its citizens avoid prosecution in the U.S., subverting the criminal justice system and leaving untold numbers of victims without any recourse.

The Oregon defendants include two accused rapists, a pair of suspected hit-and-run drivers and one man with a trove of child pornography on his computer. All five disappeared before they faced trial or completed their sentence in Oregon.

All were young men studying at a public Oregon college or university with assistance from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at the time of their arrest.

In four cases, the Saudi government stepped in after the students got into legal trouble. It posted large sums of money for bail and possibly paid for legal fees, according to court records and interviews with prosecutors.

Though decades old, the Ohio case offers the most detailed glimpse to date into the lengths the wealthy kingdom has gone to help its citizens avoid trial in the United States.

According to records and interviews, officials with the Saudi embassy tried to pressure police into releasing the defendant only days after he was jailed, claiming the student, who coincidentally had previously attended college in Portland, was mentally ill and had done nothing wrong.

The kingdom later dispatched a high-ranking Saudi Air Force officer to monitor the defendant’s court proceedings. The Saudi government also forked over a large sum of money to retain an attorney.

A month after the student’s disappearance, the county’s elected prosecutor, William Schenck, openly wondered if there was a criminal conspiracy to get him out of the country.

“This case troubles me perhaps more than any matter in which I’ve been involved as prosecuting attorney of Greene County,” Schenck wrote in a December 1988 memo to then-Rep. Michael DeWine, now the Ohio governor.

Fahad Nazer, a spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to questions about the Ohio case. He has previously said that, as a policy, the Saudi government will cover the cost of bail for any citizen jailed in the U.S. who asks for assistance.

“HE NEVER HIT THE BRAKES”

The 1988 case began on a Saturday morning in June when witnesses spotted a white Buick driven by 27-year-old Al-Plaies, a Central State University student, speeding through the heart of downtown Xenia, a sleepy hamlet southeast of Dayton.

The car plowed into the back of an Oldsmobile Cutlass at 60 mph, thrusting it 110 feet. The Buick then T-boned a pickup carrying a mother and her two small children, who were uninjured.

After coming to a stop, the battered Oldsmobile burst into flames, police and witnesses said. Inside were sisters Henrietta Beykee, 83, and her younger sibling Beatrice Brennan. They had been heading to a hair appointment.

Beatrice Brennan, third from right, burned to death in 1988 after authorities say a car driven by Abdulrahman Al-Plaies struck her vehicle in downtown Xenia, Ohio. Mike Brennan, her son, is pictured on the left.

Rescuers pulled Beykee from the burning wreckage, and she spent the next month recovering in the hospital. Brennan died inside the car, nearly half her body covered in third-degree burns, according to a coroner’s report.

Al-Plaies, whose last name also appears as Al-Bleeis and Al-Blis in records, was uninjured. He was taken to a mental health center for evaluation.

“He never even hit the brakes,” Mike Brennan, Beatrice’s son, told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Brennan was at home in nearby Miamisburg when he received a call about the crash from his parents’ neighbor. His father, the neighbor said, didn’t yet know of his wife’s death.

An only child, then 37, Brennan got into his car and headed to Xenia to tell his dad. “It was the longest 20-mile drive of my life,” he said.

The student, who was receiving a scholarship and living stipend from the Saudi government, was poor enough to qualify for a court-appointed attorney, records show.

A grand jury indicted him on charges of involuntary manslaughter, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years. His bail was set at $50,000. Authorities did not seize his passport and were told it had been misplaced or lost, according to a letter from the prosecutor’s office.

Al-Plaies pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Records show he claimed he had been on a religious fast for two weeks before the crash, drinking only water.

His lawyer, in court papers said his client’s religious fervor stemmed from a pre-existing mental illness and that his fasting had sparked a psychotic episode that ended in the crash.

“When asked about the people who were killed in the accident, he feels no remorse,” a doctor later wrote in a psychiatric evaluation. “In general, he seems to believe it was Allah’s will that these events would happen.”

“I WAS GETTING AN UNEASY FEELING”

Two days after the crash, prosecutors contacted the State Department to learn whether Al-Plaies had diplomatic immunity in the U.S., records show. They were told he did not.

A State Department desk officer later relayed news of the student’s arrest to the Saudi embassy in Washington. The embassy took an immediate interest.

Within a day, an embassy official contacted the Xenia Police Department. The official insisted the young man had no business being in jail, according to a message police sent to prosecutors.

Abdulrahman Ali Al-Plaies.

“The message said in effect, the defendant had a psychological problem, the accident wasn’t his fault and the Saudis want the defendant released to return to his country,” documents show.

The Saudi government then contacted the student’s court-appointed attorney, Steven Hurley, and asked to retain him privately.

“They didn’t even blink an eye when I told them how much I wanted,” Hurley, who is now a judge in the county’s domestic relations court, recalled in an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Hurley said he believes he and the Saudis settled on a fee of about $15,000 — equivalent to about $31,000 today.

“My one regret from this case was I didn’t ask for more money,” Hurley said.

About the same time, a Saudi military officer stationed at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, about 15 miles from Xenia, contacted police, prosecutors and even the U.S. Attorney’s Office in southern Ohio, records show.

The military officer, identified in records as Maj. A. Al-Selimy, told Greene County authorities he served as a local liaison on behalf of his government and counseled Saudi students in the U.S., documents show.

According to prosecutors, the officer attended all of the student’s pretrial court hearings. He acted as an interpreter and advocate.

Wolaver, the prosecuting attorney, said he found the military official’s level of involvement unexpected and odd.

“I was getting an uneasy feeling,” Wolaver said. “I kept wondering, ‘Why is this high-ranking Saudi officer showing up?’ He displayed an inordinate amount of interest.”

Things would only get stranger.

Days before the student’s November trial, Judge Edward Kimmel unexpectedly reduced his bail by half to $25,000.

Kimmel did not notify the prosecutor or defense attorney of his decision, which both lawyers said was uncommon.

Hurley recalled being asked to come to the clerk of court’s office where the military officer was waiting. The defense attorney assisted him with completing the paperwork for posting bail.

Mike Brennan looks over the decades-old files he kept on his mother's case. Beatrice Brennan died in a fiery car crash in Xenia, Ohio in 1988.

Al-Plaies was released.

“I believe I shook the young man’s hand. Then he got into a vehicle with the major,” Hurley said. “That was the last time I had anything to do with it.”

The student had previously attended Concordia University in Portland and Clark College in Vancouver, records show, and had lived in a Northeast Killingsworth Street apartment.

He was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving near Beaverton in March 1984, petitioned to enter a diversion program, and never showed up.

He is still wanted on an arrest warrant out of Washington County, records show.

After academic stints in Georgia and Arkansas, Al-Plaies landed at Ohio’s Central State University in 1986.

After his release, he was never seen again in the U.S.

The involvement of a foreign government, the steep drop in bail and the sudden disappearance of the defendant days before trial was unprecedented in Greene County.

Alarmed by the events, Schenck, the county prosecutor, asked the area’s congressman for help — and expressed his deep misgivings about the case.

“I cannot prove there was any conspiracy, but I am highly suspicious of the circumstances of this release,” Schenck wrote in his letter to DeWine.

“I feel personally offended by what has occurred in this case, especially if the Saudi government assisted in the helping of a criminal defendant to leave the country.”

In an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive, Hurley, the defense attorney, declined to speculate about what happened to his client.

“I think there were decisions made in this case above my pay grade,” Hurley said. “All you got to do is read the news and you’ll see decisions are made between us and the Saudi government with bigger implications than what happened in our little county in Ohio.”

Saudi Arabia has been an important ally of the United States for decades.

The case, Hurley said, “certainly opened my eyes to a few things, to what powers are out there that can influence things, even things in a small community.

“Your questions might best be answered by the judge or by someone in Washington, D.C.”

Oregon’s two U.S. senators, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, on Friday introduced a pair of bills targeting foreign consulates that help their citizens escape criminal prosecution in the U.S.

The proposed legislation, which explicitly cites Saudi Arabia and two of the defendants who vanished in Oregon, would require the federal government to investigate such disappearances, prevent them from happening again and punish the Saudi government for its suspected role.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Reached by phone in Florida, Kimmel, who retired from the bench in 1992 and is now 87 years old, said he has no recollection of the case.

“Even if it weren’t my case, I’d think I’d recall something like that,” he said. “This whole thing sounds fictional to me.”

“NEVER IS A LONG TIME”

But the ordeal was all too real for the Brennans. Mike Brennan said he became caretaker for his aunt after she got out of the hospital. He paid her bills. Drove her to appointments. Cleaned her home.

Brennan’s father also struggled, the son recalled. “He’d break down every now and then and say, ‘I miss your mom,’” Brennan said. His father died the next year.

Prosecutors did not give up on finding Al-Plaies.

“The death of Mrs. Brennan should not simply be swept aside by any circumstances and simply be forgotten because this man is probably now gone,” Schenck said in his letter to DeWine.

The next March, a prosecutor’s office investigator, a Xenia police detective and a DeWine aide traveled to Texas on a tip that a student might be living there. Their search turned up nothing.

As recently as 2009, Greene County authorities were in touch with “America’s Most Wanted” producers with the hope of reviving interest, emails show. It’s unclear whether the TV show expressed interest in featuring the case.

A warrant for Al-Plaies remains active, the prosecutor’s office told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

“If they ever find this guy, I’ll be shocked,” Brennan said. “But you never know. Never is a long time.”

The case has left Wolaver — the onetime prosecutor and now judge — with a lasting impression.

“If I ever get a Saudi national in my court, I’m going to look at things differently,” he said. “I think every judge in America ought to do the same.”

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh; 503-294-7632; skavanaugh@oregonian.com