Saudi Arabia Issues New Qatar ‘Terror’ Blacklist

Saudi Arabia and its allies continued to ratchet up the rhetoric against Qatar today with the announcement of a new Qatar-specific terrorism list, claiming that the new list proves Qatar isn’t fighting against terrorism, as it has publicly promised, but is instead secretly supporting terrorism.

The list includes 59 people and 12 entities. The list includes at least two people who are accused of being terrorist financiers, and both of whom Qatar had already imposed sanctions against themselves. Among the rest of the people on the list, only a handful are actually from Qatar, with many of them people from Egypt, Libya, and Bahrain.

Though a lot of the details about what the people on the list are accused of are unclear, the list appears to be heavy on members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who are vilified in Egypt for being part of the elected government the military junta ousted, and Bahraini Shi’ites, who the Bahrain royal family are mad at for demanding equal rights.

Tensions between Qatar and the rest of the GCC center heavily on Qatar’s state media supporting calls for democratic reforms during the Arab Spring, something which didn’t sit well with the Saudis or the other Gulf Arab states. This is a continuation of the effort to rebrand such support as tantamount to supporting terrorism.