مجموعة ٦/ ١٩ "الجزيرة العربية: (المملكة العربية السعودية) التقرير السنوي لمملكة الحجاز ونجد." [و‎‎١‎٦‎١] (٥٤٠/٣٢٢)

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75. Alleged Murder' of State Prisoners at Riyadh .—It was widely and
categorically rumoured at Koweit in the autumn that three leaders concerned
in the Nejd rebellion of 1929, who had been imprisoned at Riyadh, had been
done to death. Two of these were among the fugitive rebels surrendered by the
British authorities to Ibn Saud early in 1930. Sir Andrew Ryan therefore took
the matter up in a friendly manner on the 29th December with Fuad Bey, who,
in due course, conveyed to him the King’s assurance that the men were alive.
Information received in the interval made it seem probable that the prisoners
had not been killed, but had been removed from Riyadh to more rigorous
confinement at Hofuf.
(2) France and Syria.
76. There were no overt developments in the relations between France and
Saudi Arabia in the early part of 1933. The French representative in Jedda
lives the life of a recluse when at his post and shows no outward signs of political
activity, although he is probably kept well informed by his Algerian Moslem
vice-consul. In the spring the consulate was stirred out of its appearance of
apathy in regard to all matters except a moderate amount of pilgrimage
work by a scandalous adventure. A certain Mme. D’Andhurin, a French
woman of some birth and education, well known in Syria as an hotel
keeper at Palmyra, wished to make the pilgrimage, to obtain copy, it was said,
for a book. She conceived the original plan of marrying a Nej di for the purpose
and was duly wedded to him at Haifa, after the French authorities in Syria had
successfully opposed the union. When the couple came to Jedda, the Saudi
Government refused permission to the wife to go to Mecca. She languished in
Jedda while the bridegroom made the pilgrimage alone. Very soon after his
return to Jedda he died in suspicious circumstances. The lady was arrested on
the charge of having poisoned him and was held in prison some three months.
The French consulate could not intervene officially as Mme. D’Andhurin had
acquired Saudi nationality, but they interested themselves unofficially in the case,
which was the more embarrassing for M. Maigret, as his son, a good-looking
ne’er-do-well, had been intimate with the accused and had to be whisked away
very quickly after the arrest. She was eventually acquitted and left Jedda on
the 5th July, seen off by the Algerian vice-consul and demurely attired in widow’s
weeds.
77. A month later the French Charge d’Affaires left for Syria for the
second time in 1933. It presently became known that he had obtained permission
or been invited to go to Riyadh on his return, a journey without recent precedent,
as far as any diplomatic representative is concerned, although the King had
recently allowed Mr. Twitchell to go there. After various delays, M. Maigret
returned to Jedda on the 3rd December and left on the 11th December for Riyadh,
accompanied by Fuad Bey Hamza. It had by this time become apparent that
there was more of a business side to the affair than had at first been admitted.
Curiosity would have been a sufficient motive to take M. Maigret to Nejd,^ but
Ibn Saud does not encourage mere curiosity in regard to the interior of his
country. After M. Maigret returned on the 21st December, he himself stuck
to the story that the King, knowing him to be a friend of this country and of
Islam, had' kindly invited him to visit Riyadh to gratify his passion for travel
and to enable him to add to the material for a projected book. Fuad Bey told
Sir Andrew Ryan in confidence a very different story. He dismissed the more
picturesque rumours to which the episode had given rise, that the French were
offering the throne of Syria to a Saudi prince, that they were intervening in
the Saudi-Yemen quarrel or that they were following up negotiations in regard
to the Hejaz Railway, which Fuad Bey himself was supposed to have initiated
when in Syria last autumn (see paragraph 73). The facts, according to Fuad
Bey, were that, when he and the Amir Feisal were in Paris in 1932, they had
explored the possibility of obtaining assistance from the French Government in
the shape of facilities for war material and a market loan, as well as a mission
to help with military organisation and the Saudi air force. M. Maigret had
been invited to Riyadh, he said (without disclosing much of what had happened
in the interval), to convey the reply of the French Government to the desiderata
of the Saudi Government.