{"id":28952,"date":"2019-01-13T14:22:49","date_gmt":"2019-01-13T14:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=28952"},"modified":"2019-01-13T14:22:49","modified_gmt":"2019-01-13T14:22:49","slug":"canada-saudi-accused-of-sexual-assault-disappears-before-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=28952","title":{"rendered":"Canada: Saudi accused of sexual assault disappears before trial"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Canadian authorities are searching for a Saudi citizen accused of sexual assault after he failed to show up for a court hearing in the Canadian city of Sydney, Nova Scotia, the local Chronicle Herald newspaper said.<\/p>\n

Mohammed Zuraibi al-Zoabi, a student at Cape Breton University, faces charges of sexual assault, assault, forcible confinement, uttering threats, criminal harassment, dangerous driving and assault with a weapon (a vehicle) in separate trials related to two incidents that occurred in Sydney between 2016 and 2017.<\/p>\n

Local police told the Chronicle Herald that al-Zoabi’s passport was given as collateral when the 28-year-old student posted his $37,500 bail in cash, a hefty sum provided by the Saudi Arabian embassy.<\/p>\n

“It should be impossible (for him to leave the country or enter without a passport) unless Saudi Arabia<\/a>\u00a0furnished him with a Saudi travel document,” Lee Cohen, a Halifax-based immigration lawyer, told the Chronicle Herald.<\/p>\n

“They have done this before.”<\/p>\n

Asked by the paper whether he was still in Canada<\/a>, al-Zoabi said “probably not \u2026 I can’t tell you that”, adding that he wouldn’t come back for the trial because he feared they might be “unfair”.<\/p>\n

“I can’t respect that,” he said of the warrant and charges. “Everybody’s against me just because I’m a (racial expletive) and foreign student despite the fact that we boosted so much money to that island of Canada.”<\/p>\n

The Saudi Arabian embassy did not respond to a Chronicle Herald request for comment on al-Zoabi.<\/p>\n

Jessica Hines, the manager of Kevin’s Towing in Sydney, Cape Breton, described al-Zoabi as “rude, obnoxious and thought he was above women and the rules”.<\/p>\n

“First time I met him consisted of him coming into my office and snapping his fingers because I didn’t greet him quick enough as I was busy,” Hines said.<\/p>\n

“I immediately marked my dominance by telling him, ‘I don’t jump for men when they snap their fingers at me’, and made him sit and wait for near an hour.”<\/p>\n

Between March 2012 and April 2016, al-Zoabi racked up 34 infractions ranging from speeding, driving uninsured, driving without a valid license, unregistered and uninspected vehicles. Unpaid to this day, the fines amount to $68,967.<\/p>\n

News of al-Zoabi’s suspected escape will only serve to further exacerbate\u00a0Canada’s already poor relations with Saudi Arabia<\/a>, which last year barred the Canadian ambassador to Riyadh after Ottawa criticised Saudi authorities for detaining female activists.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most recently, Canada agreed to grant asylum to a Saudi teenager fleeing abuse<\/a> from her family.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rahaf Alqunun, 18, was greeted by Canada’s Foreign Minister\u00a0Chrystia Freeland on Saturday, ending an ordeal that saw her stranded at Thailand<\/a>‘s international airport for about a week.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n
\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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‘Brave new Canadian’: Saudi teen Rahaf Alqunun arrives in Canada (2:17)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

Riyadh was already struggling to deal with the blowback from the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi<\/a>\u00a0at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul late last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Turkish and Western intelligence officials have either hinted at or directly blamed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman<\/a> for the murder but Saudi monarch King Salman left his son’s portfolios unchanged in the latest reshuffle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canadian authorities are searching for a Saudi citizen accused of sexual assault after he failed to show up for a court hearing in the Canadian city of Sydney, Nova Scotia, the local Chronicle Herald newspaper said. Mohammed Zuraibi al-Zoabi, a student at Cape Breton University, faces charges of sexual assault, assault, forcible confinement, uttering threats,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":28953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}