by Jean Sasson
September 27, 2011 Shaima Jastaina is sentenced to be lashed ten times with a whip for defying the Saudi ban on female drivers. King Abdullah quickly overturns the court ruling.
September 29, 2011 Saudi Arabian men cast ballots in local council elections, the second-ever nationwide vote in the oil-rich kingdom. Women are not allowed to vote in the election. The councils are one of the few elected bodies in the country, but have no real power, mandated to offer advice to provincial authorities.
September 29, 2011 Manssor Arbabsiar, a U.S. citizen holding an Iranian passport, is arrested when he arrives at New York’s Kennedy International Airport. Mexico worked closely with U.S. authorities to help foil an alleged $1.5 million plot to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States. On October 11, Arbabsiar is charged in the U.S. District Court in New York with conspiring to kill Saudi diplomat Adel al-Jubeir.
October 22, 2011 Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, heir to the Saudi throne, dies in the United States. He had been receiving treatment for colon cancer, first diagnosed in 2009.
October 27, 2011 Saudi Arabia’s powerful interior minister, Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, is named the new heir to the throne in a royal decree read out on Saudi state television.
November 30, 2011 Amnesty International publishes a new report accusing Saudi Arabia of conducting a campaign of repression against protesters and reformists since the Arab Spring erupted.
December 6, 2011 Saudi Arabia sentences an Australian man, Mansor Almaribe, to five hundred lashes and a year in jail after being found guilty of blasphemy. He was detained in Medina on November 14 while making the hajj and accused of insulting companions of the Prophet Muhammad.
December 10, 2011 Okaz, Saudi Arabia’s daily newspaper reports that a man convicted of raping his daughter has been sentenced to receive 2,080 lashes over the course of a thirteen-year prison term. A court in Mecca found the man guilty of raping his teenage daughter for seven years while under the influence of drugs.
December 12, 2011 Saudi authorities execute a woman convicted of practicing magic and sorcery. Court records state that she had tricked people into thinking she could treat illnesses, charging them eight hundred dollars per session.
December 15, 2011 Police raid a private prayer gathering, arresting thirty-five Ethiopian Christians, twenty-nine of them women. They later face deportation for “illicit mingling.”
Seventy-six death row inmates are executed in Saudi Arabia in 2011.
Indonesian maid Satinah Binti Jumad Ahmadi is sentenced to death for murdering her employer’s wife in 2007 and stealing money. In 2014, the Indonesian government agree to pay $1.8 million to free Satinah.
January 2, 2012 Saudi Arabia announces that later in the year, on December 5, it will begin enforcing a law that allows female workers only in women’s lingerie and apparel stores.
February 12, 2012 Malaysian authorities deport Hamza Kashgari, a young Saudi journalist wanted in his home country over a Twitter post about the Prophet Muhammad, defying pleas from human-rights groups who say he faces execution. His tweet read: “I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don’t understand about you.”
February 2012 A royal order stipulates that women who drive should not be prosecuted by the courts.
March 22, 2012 Saudi Arabia media reports say single men in Riyadh will be able to visit shopping malls during peak hours after restrictions aimed at stopping harassment of women are eased.
April 4, 2012 A Saudi official reiterates that Saudi Arabia will be fielding only male athletes at the London Olympics. However, Prince Nawaf bin Faisal announces that Saudi women taking part on their own are free to do so but the kingdom’s Olympic authority would “only help in ensuring that their participation does not violate the Islamic sharia law.”
April 4, 2012 A man found guilty of shooting dead a fellow Saudi is beheaded. His execution in Riyadh brings the total number of beheadings to seventeen for 2012.
May 23, 2012 An outspoken and brave Saudi woman defies orders by the notorious religious police to leave a mall because she is wearing nail polish and records the interaction on her camera. Her video goes viral, attracting more than a million hits in just five days.
June 16, 2012 Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, a half-brother of King Abdullah, dies. Nayef is the second crown prince to die under King Abdullah’s rule.
June 18, 2012 Saudi Arabia’s Defense Minister Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, a half-brother to King Abdullah is appointed as the new crown prince.
June 24, 2012 In Saudi Arabia, a man dies from severe pneumonia complicated by renal failure. He had arrived at a Jeddah hospital eleven days earlier with symptoms similar to a severe case of influenza or SARS. In September, an Egyptian virologist says it was caused by a new coronavirus. Months later, the illness is named MERS (Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome).
June 17, 2012 Blogger Raif Badawi is jailed for ridiculing Islamic religious figures.
July 20, 2012 Saudi authorities warn non-Muslim expatriates against eating, drinking, or smoking in public during Ramadan, or face expulsion.
July 30, 2012 Saudi Arabia implements a ban on smoking in government offices and most public places, including restaurants, coffee shops, supermarkets, and shopping malls.
January 9, 2013 Saudi authorities behead Rizana Nafeek, a Sri Lankan domestic worker for killing a Saudi baby in her care. She was only seventeen at the time of the baby’s death and proclaimed her innocence, denying strangling the four-month-old boy. Many agencies and individuals worldwide pleaded with the boy’s family, and with the Saudi government, to pardon the girl.
January 11, 2013 King Abdullah issues two royal decrees granting women thirty seats on the Shura Council. The council has 150 members. Although the council reviews laws and questions ministers, it does not have legislative powers.
January 15, 2013 Dozens of conservative clerics picket the royal court to condemn the recent appointment of 30 women to the 150-member Shura Council.
April 1, 2013 A Saudi newspaper reports that the kingdom’s religious police are now allowing women to ride motorbikes and bicycles, but only in restricted recreational areas. They also have to be accompanied by a male relative and be dressed in the full Islamic abaya.
May 16, 2013 Riyadh vegetable street vendor Muhammad Harissi sets himself on fire after police confiscate his goods after he was found to be standing in an unauthorized area. He died the next day.
July 29, 2013 Raif Badawi, editor of the Free Saudi Liberals website, is sentenced to seven years in prison and six hundred lashes for founding an Internet forum that violates Islamic values and propagates liberal thought. Badawi has been held since June 2012 on charges of cyber-crime and disobeying his father.
September 20, 2013 U.S. prosecutors drop charges against Meshael Alayban, a Saudi princess accused of enslaving a Kenyan woman as a housemaid, forcing her to work in abusive conditions and withholding her passport. Lawyers for the Saudi royal accused the thirty-year-old Kenyan, who has not been named, of lying in an attempt to obtain a visa to stay in the United States.
October 8, 2013 A Saudi court sentences a well-known cleric convicted of raping his five-year-old daughter and torturing her to death to eight years in prison and eight hundred lashes. The court also orders the cleric to pay his ex-wife, the girl’s mother, 1 million riyals in “blood money.” A second wife, accused of taking part in the crime, is sentenced to ten months in prison and 150 lashes.
October 18, 2013 Angry by the failure of the international community to end the war in Syria and act on other Middle East issues, Saudi Arabia says it will not take up its seat on the U.N. Security Council.
October 22, 2013 A source says that Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief revealed that the kingdom will make a “major shift” in relations with the United States in protest at its perceived inaction over the Syria war and its overtures to Iran.
October 24, 2013 Saudi women are warned that the gover
nment will take measures against activists who go ahead with a planned weekend campaign to defy a ban on women drivers in the conservative Muslim kingdom.
October 26, 2013 Saudi activists say more than sixty women claimed to have answered their call to get behind the wheel in a rare show of defiance against a ban on female driving. At least sixteen Saudi women received fines for defying the ban on female driving.
October 27, 2013 Saudi police detain Tariq al-Mubarak, a columnist who supported ending Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving.
November 3, 2013 A Kuwaiti newspaper reports that a Kuwaiti woman has been arrested in Saudi Arabia for trying to drive her father to hospital.
December 12, 2013 Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti, the highest religious authority in the birthplace of Islam, condemns suicide bombings as grave crimes, reiterating his stance in unusually strong language in the Saudi-owned newspaper Al Hayat.
December 20, 2013 Saudi Arabia beheads a drug trafficker. So far in 2013, seventy-seven people have been executed, according to an Agence France-Presse count.
December 22, 2013 Saudi Arabia’s official news agency says King Abdullah has appointed his sixth son Prince Mishaal, as the new governor of Mecca.
February 20, 2014 Rights groups criticize an agreement between Indonesia and Saudi Arabia aimed at giving Indonesian maids more protection in the kingdom, with one saying “justice is still far away.”
New anti-terrorism law is introduced which critics claim will further stifle peaceful dissent in the kingdom.
March 16, 2014 Okaz, the local daily newspaper reports that organizers at the Riyadh International Book Fair have confiscated “more than 10,000 copies of 420 books” during the exhibition, which began on March 4. Organizers had announced ahead of the event that any book deemed “against Islam” or “undermining security” in the kingdom would be confiscated.
Saudi government designates Islamic groups as terror organizations. The government bans any support or funding for these groups, which are The Islamic State (ISIS), the Muslim Brotherhood, and the AL-Nusra Front.
April 8, 2014 Saudi Arabia’s Shura Council recommends that a longstanding ban on sports in girls’ state schools, which was relaxed in private schools in 2013, be ended altogether.
September 2014 Saudi Arabia (along with other Arab States) join with the United States in air strikes against ISIS sanctuaries in Syria.
January 23, 2015 King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud dies. He was the sixth king to rule Saudi Arabia. Prince Salman ascends the throne to become the seventh king of Saudi Arabia.
February 2015 King Salman begins his reign by donating more than 30 billion dollars to his people.
March 2015 Saudi Arabia attacks Houthi rebels in neighboring Yemen. Other Arab states join them in air strikes.
April 2015 King Salman created a potential crisis in the kingdom when he broke with King Abdullah’s plan to move away from the Sudairis when King Abdullah appointed a half-brother (and youngest son of the first king) as crown prince. King Salman quickly reversed King Abdullah’s appointments, pushing out the crown prince and moving to the third generation (the grandsons of the first king) when he appointed Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef as the new crown prince. The king then appointed his own son, Mohammed bin Salman, as deputy crown prince. With this unexpected move, King Salman moved the crown closer to the next generation of al-Saud, and specifically to the Sudairi clan, as both his nephew and son are descendants of the Sudairi side of the family.
May 10, 2015 Saudi Arabia’s King Salman announces that he will not attend the summit meeting called by President Obama. The Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will represent Saudi Arabia. This decision signals a huge shift in the relationship between the United
King Salman and other leaders in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries go public with their displeasure of President Obama’s Middle East policies.States and Saudi Arabia.
May 16, 2015 The coalition led by Saudi Arabia resumed airstrikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen shortly after the five-day cease-fire ends. This renewed bombing threatens the ongoing relief efforts in Yemen.
Eighty people in Yemen are killed in a one-day death toll from airstrikes by Saudi-led coalition against Houthi rebels.
May 18, 2015 The Saudi Arabian government stuns the world when seeking executioners for beheadings and limb amputations in public squares in the country.
May 31, 2015 The Saudi royal family make plans to build a theme park attraction in the old capital of Diriyah.
June 5, 2015 Air agencies report that nearly two thousasnd Yemenis have died in the conflict since March. Millions of civilians are in urgent need of medical care for war related injuries or other medical issues.
June 6, 2016 Houthi rebels fire a Scud missile from Yemen into Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia shoots it down.
June 7, 2015 Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court upholds the verdict against Raif Badawi, the liberal blogger who was previously found guilty of insulting Islam.
The Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministry rejects all criticism for the conviction and sentence of ten years and 1,000 lashes for Raif Badawi. The blogger is lauded worldwide for his bravery in the face of government harassment, arrest, imprisonment and torture by lashing.
July 2015 Various reports now say that 3,000 Yemenis have died in the past three months of fighting.
July 9, 2015 Prince Saud al-Faisal ibn Faisal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud dies at age seventy-five. The prince served as Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister for four decades. He was a highly educated and sophisticated man who was respected worldwide.
July 1, 2015 Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia says he will donate his entire $32 billion fortune to help eradicate disease, empower women, and relief for disasters.
Yemen: Time Line, 2011–2015
The Houthis follow a branch of Shite Islam which is known as Zaidism. Zaidis governed North Yemen for nearly a thousand years until 1962. The Houthis seized Sanaa in 2014 setting off the current crisis in that country and bringing air attacks from Saudi Arabia.
January 27, 2011 Revolution in Yemen begins when protesters in Sanaa call for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to resign after thirty years in power.
September 12, 2011 President Saleh gives Vice-President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi special powers for negotiating transition of power with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Yemen’s political opposition parties.
November 25, 2011 President Saleh agrees to hand over power to his Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. A unity government is formed.
January 21, 2012 The Yemeni Parliament votes to give former President Saleh and his family immunity from prosecution.
February 27, 2012 Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi is inaugurated as president of Yemen after a one-man election.
May 2012 With Yemen on the brink of a food crisis, international aid is pledged.
June 2012 The Yemen army recaptures three Al-Qaeda sanctuaries in the south.
November 28, 2012 Militants attack the Saudi diplomat’s convoy in Sanaa. The diplomat and his bodyguard are killed. Witnesses say that the militants were policemen.
March 18, 2013 A national dialogue conference convenes with the purpose of drafting a new constitution.
April 7, 2013 Ahmed Ali Saleh, he son of the ex-president is fired from his position as head of the Third Republican Guard.
July 2013 The United States intensifies their drone attacks against Al-Qaeda in Yemen.
December 2013 Mass protests commence in the eastern province of Hadramawt after a tribal leader is shot at a military checkpoint.
January 25, 2014 After nearly a year of deliberation, the National Dialogue Conference agrees to a document on which the new Yemen constitution will be based.
February 10, 2014 Presidential panel votes to give approval for Yemen to become a federation of six regions.
July 12, 2014 Disgruntled Yemeni tribesmen destroy Yemen’s largest oil pipeline. Oil supplies are disrupted.
August 1, 2014 Yemen Preside
nt Hadi fires his entire cabinet and overturns the fuel mandate, after two weeks of anti-government protests led by the Houthi rebels against a fuel price hike.
September 18, 2014 In a stunning turn of events, Houthi rebels take control of the capital Sanaa.
September 23, 2014 The United Nations negotiates a peace deal. Houthis consent to withdraw their fighters if they approve of a new national unity government.
January 19, 2015 After rejecting the new constitution proposed by the government, the Houthis seize the Yemen state TV. Fights break out between the Houthis and government troops in the capital.
January 22, 2015 Yemen President Hadi and his government resign at the occupation of the capital by Houthi rebels. Hadi later withdraws his resignation.
February 6, 2015 Houthi leaders seize power. They form a transitional five-member presidential council to replace President Hadi.
The U.N. Security Council condemns Houthi action and demands that the Houthi negotiate under the aegis of the Gulf Cooperation Council.
February 21, 2015 Yemen President Hadi flees Sanaa and escapes to Aden.
March 20, 2015 ISIS targets two Shite mosques in Sanaa. More than 130 people are killed. The Houthi rebels advance toward southern Yemen.
March 25–26, 2015 President Hadi flees Aden. A Saudi-led coalition of Arab states launches air strikes against Shia Houthi rebel targets. The coalition imposes a naval blockade. Iran condemns the coalition.
March 31, 2015 The United Nations warns that Yemen is “on the verge of total collapse.”
June 16, 2015 Talks on the conflict in Yemen open in Geneva.
Brief Update on Yemen and the Lives of Two Brave Women, Italia and Fiery
The Yemen Times has continued reporting online, although their print edition has been suspended, so it is possible to keep up with daily news coming out of Yemen.
Their reporters make it clear that life for the average Yemeni has deteriorated to such an extent, making it nearly impossible for Yemenis to live any kind of normal life. Electricity and other basic services have collapsed. There is a humanitarian crisis that is developing that is setting the poorest country in the Middle East, back for decades.