Princess Basmah, a senior Saudi royal, granddaughter of the founding monarch, has revealed she is being held in prison and in urgent need of medical care. She says she has been detained since last March without charge in Riyadh with one of her daughters, with no explanations for their arrests, despite repeated pleas to her uncle King Salman. She had been a frequent advocate of reform in the kingdom, including a change to a constitutional monarchy, and improvement in women’s rights and humanitarian rights.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the arrest fitted a clear pattern of dissenters being ruthlessly silenced by Prince Mohammed. “Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s rampant repression of all forms of critics, including people he can extort money out of, the space for dissent has shrunk greatly,” said a senior women’s rights researcher at HRW. “This is particularly the case for women, many of whom have been silenced, imprisoned, or are in exile right now.”
Basmah Bint Al Saud was born on 1 March 1964 in Riyadh, the 115th and youngest of King Saud’s children, during the final months of her father’s reign, as he was overthrown in a palace coup. Her mother took her to Beirut but had to flee, when she was 11, to the UK when civil war broke out. She was educated in Britain, Beirut and the USA, married a Saudi and had five children.
She has a stark chart with a Sun Mars in Pisces opposition Uranus Pluto in Virgo – so acclimatised to danger and frustratingly trapped circumstances. Her Sun (Mars) are in a Water Grand Trine to Neptune and a North Node in Cancer which has a potential to be a healing force.
Her relationship chart with her cousin MbS, the power-hungry Crown Prince, is conflicted and undermining with an argumentative composite Sun Mars in a hostile trine to Pluto, an evasive, unsupportive opposition to Neptune with a resentful Saturn square Pluto.
There’s nothing much on her chart (without birth time) to suggest good news anytime soon.
Her unhappy plight is unlikely to make much of a dent on the Jared/Trump/MbS bro-romance. But there are signs of a pulling-away this year from the present White House incumbents. With the Jared/MBS bond being seriously tested by events in May/June and beyond. And Trump who was less than enamoured over the oil debacle isn’t looking too pleased with MbS or vice versa either as the year proceeds.
The West may have its drawbacks but looking at countries like Saudi Arabia is like stepping into a horror episode of Game of Thrones.
Mohammed bin Salman has no time of birth on record, but he does have a scary T-Square on Pluto in Scorpio squaring Venus in Leo and Jupiter in Aquarius and transit Uranus is currently in Taurus, making a Grand Cross of these fixed planets. Jupiter/Pluto I associate with crazed religious or political cult leaders who impose strict rules on others but think they’re above those rules themselves. I always recall that high five with Putin at the G20 summit a couple of years ago, which at the time made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end! Turns out Putin has a fixed Taurus Jupiter square to Pluto in Leo also. Birds of a feather.
Yet another horror story from this seemingly untouchable regime, and its drunk-on-power Prince. I did wonder about the lunar eclipse on 5th June. It squares Princess Basmah’s Chiron in Pisces, opposing her Pluto. Mars is at 15 Pisces square the eclipse Sun and Moon, conjunt the Princess’ natal Chiron. Mercury at 9 Cancer on that day will pass over her North Node, which could point to family patterns, the use of information against her, or possibly they decide to move her somewhere else to another “home”. None of it looks too hopeful though, as you say. And doubtless the current White House incumbents will do whatever suits them best financially.