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July 16, 2002 8:45 a.m. State Pressure The Saudis feel heat over the Roush case, but it's status quo at the State Dept.

he Saudi government is getting hot under the kaffiyeh these days from all the media coverage of the Patricia Roush affair, in which an American woman has been trying for nearly two decades to free her (now adult) daughters from Saudi Arabia. Adel al-Jubair, the Saudi crown prince's personal emissary, is said to have called on a top U.S. State Department official last week to offer a deal the Saudis hope will put the troublesome Roush situation behind them.

Roush tells NRO a State Department official phoned her late last week to report that Al-Jubair told William Burns, who heads State's Near East Affairs bureau, that the Kingdom would permit two female officials from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh to meet Roush's daughters, Aisha and Alia al-Gheshayan, at a "tea party" at Alia's villa. In return for the meeting, Roush says, the State Department would have to guarantee that during the visit, the embassy officials would take down a statement from the young women stating where they wanted to live — presumably, in Saudi Arabia — and make it public.

"I asked, 'Did Ambassador Burns mention that these are two American citizens, and we want permission for them to come to the United States?' The answer was no," Roush tells NRO. "Ambassador Burns told [al-Jubair] that the statement would appear staged. That's all he said."

A State Department spokeswoman declined to confirm or deny the contents of the conversation between Burns and al-Jubair, or that the meeting took place. "Because they have not signed a Privacy Act waiver, we cannot comment on any issues regarding [Roush's daughters] because they are both adults," the spokeswoman said.

Roush responded acidly: "They're not able to sign a Privacy Act waiver because they are being held by a totalitarian regime."

As those who have been following this case know, an American court awarded Roush custody of daughters Alia and Aisha in a 1985 divorce from her husband, Khalid, who comes from an influential Saudi family. In 1986, Khalid kidnapped the children and took them to Saudi Arabia. Roush has been trying ever since to get her children back, with virtually no help from the State Department, which, in theory, is supposed to work for Americans. In fact, State has an appalling record of appeasing the Saudis in these matters, a fact that has been pointed out with prophetic outrage most recently by the Wall Street Journal editorial page and its editorialist, William McGurn.

The al-Gheshayan girls are now in their early 20s. Alia was married off — "sold" is Roush's phrase — by her father to a favored family member, and has had a child. The day before she testified before a House panel this past June, Roush learned that Aisha had also been married. Their mother wants the U.S. to issue passports to Aisha, Alia, and their children, and the Saudi government to give them visas for America, so they can travel here to say, without Saudi pressure, what their true wishes are regarding residency.

"This is a cult," Roush says, of Saudi society. "My daughters have been held by a cult for 16 years, and they aren't able to speak the truth freely."

In its public pronouncements, the State Department has consistently referred to this affair as a child-custody dispute (chief spokesman Richard Boucher did so as recently as Friday's press briefing), as if it were a private matter between feuding family members. The truth is, it has always been a matter of two American citizens stolen from their mother and their native country, and held incommunicado in a foreign land. Now that the al-Gheshayan girls are adults, the old State Department line justifying its inaction is beyond farcical. Let Congress recognize this for what it is: a hostage situation, perpetuated by the Saudi rulers, and abetted for 16 years by appeasing American diplomats.

Congress should order State to deny visas to any Saudi government official until and unless Aisha and Alia al-Gheshayan, and indeed all American citizens held illegally in Saudi Arabia, are allowed to return home. It is entirely possible that those kidnapped as children, but who are now adults, may choose to live in Saudi Arabia. But that must be their choice, and it must be communicated in an atmosphere free of coercion. This absurd "tea party" in Riyadh does not qualify.

Yet the fact that it is even being offered by a top representative of the Saudi government is a sign that public pressure may be working. Americans should realize, though, that their own government is a great obstacle to a just resolution to these cases. As Ali al-Ahmed, the Saudi democracy activist who runs the Virginia-based Saudi Institute, tells NRO, "I'm amazed by the way the State Department has behaved in the Roush case, and several other cases. Is it the U.S. State Department, or the Saudi State Department?"