A couple of days ago we posted the beginning of an interview with Jean-Pierre Marongiu, a French entrepreneur who spent five years in prison in Qatar. Below are parts 2 and 3 of the same interview. Based on the end of part 3, it seems there will be at least one more installment of this interview.
Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translations, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling. Note: The end of part 2 and the beginning of part 3 overlap, so there are a few sentences of repeated content.
Part 2:
Part 2:
Video transcript #2:
| 04:13 | You have rather hard words | |
| 04:17 | and understandably so, about this state, a thuggish state, | |
| 04:22 | the richest and the most arrogant in the world. —Absolutely. They have | |
| 04:26 | revenge to take. There’s no doubt that during first years of the exploitation of the | |
| 04:30 | gas and petrol centers the Western nations | |
| 04:34 | helped themselves abundantly. Today, the loans having been reimbursed, | |
| 04:38 | they are the kings of the world, since the GDP of Qatar is the highest | |
| 04:42 | in the world. So they make us pay out of a sort of | |
| 04:47 | Vengeful spite, and that arrogance is linked to | |
| 04:51 | all the spheres. They also know that the resources won’t last forever. They therefore have | |
| 04:55 | a need to acquire shares and buy real estate all over the planet, especially | |
| 04:59 | in Paris. A thuggish state, because in order to | |
| 05:03 | maintain their own security, they happily finance all the terrorist movements . — So, precisely, | |
| 05:07 | this is the subject of my second question, Jean-Pierre Marongiu: | |
| 05:12 | you affirm forthrightly that the state of Qatar has financially supported | |
| 05:16 | the Islamic State, while the former exterior minister Laurent Fabius | |
| 05:20 | has always maintained that they had no proof whatsoever. What is | |
| 05:24 | your evidence? —My evidence is the cohabitation with members of the Qatari Royal family, | |
| 05:28 | which at some point… —During your incarceration, voilà. — Absolutely. | |
| 05:32 | Sheikh Talal al-Thani, especially, who for years | |
| 05:36 | worked for the Qatari government, at the time of Sheikh Hamad, | |
| 05:41 | in order to transfer staggering sums of money to all the organizations, | |
| 05:45 | Sunni, or Shia, it didn’t matter to them — So, therefore, | |
| 05:49 | it might be Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, | |
| 05:53 | the Islamic State… —Hamas —Hamas, Shias —Hezbollah, | |
| 05:57 | voilà. —Absolutely. —All the organizations…well, | |
| 06:00 | after that I don’t know if we can paint them all | |
| 06:03 | with the same terrorist brush — who should be doing the painting? — I’ll use a shortcut: | |
| 06:06 | It’s enough to have a beard and weapons be able to go and ask for money in Qatar. | |
| 06:10 | Voilà, so this sheikh Talal Abdel-Aziz Al-Thani, whom you just mentioned, is the | |
| 06:14 | cousin of the current emir, and whom they imprisoned, who was imprisoned | |
| 06:18 | in the same prison as you. —Precisely. They have the same grandfather, meaning that | |
| 06:22 | Sheikh Talal is hierarchically on the same level in the al-Thani branch, | |
| 06:26 | except that he is on another branch, precisely | |
| 06:31 | the cursed branch, the one that has no longer access to power. | |
| 06:35 | So, voilà, you mention this Sheikh Talal who owns — | |
| 06:39 | so he says — documents of fund transfers from the state of Qatar to ISIS, | |
| 06:43 | to the Taliban, to Hezbollah, to the Houthi rebels [Yemen], voilà. So all those | |
| 06:47 | organizations about which French state has always maintained | |
| 06:51 | that we have no evidence that Qatar is financing those organizations. | |
| 06:56 | You also mention a stay in your prison | |
| 07:00 | by a delegation of twenty-five soldiers of the Islamic State. Could you tell us | |
| 07:04 | the context and the atmosphere? —Those twenty-five soldiers, | |
| 07:08 | as we have habit of calling them, are members of the Qatari aristocracy, | |
| 07:12 | who went to fight with the Al-Baghdadi army | |
| 07:16 | in Syria. Young men, Qatari, | |
| 07:20 | sometimes al-Thanis, and under international pressure | |
| 07:25 | which was prompted by the implications of Qataris | |
| 07:29 | who fought at the side of the Islamic State, Sheikh al-Thani | |
| 07:33 | was forced to impose punishment on them, | |
| 07:37 | and for twenty-four days they were assigned to the block where I was kept, | |
| 07:41 | to do penance. So they put in place their own | |
| 07:46 | system of governing, imposing taxes, imposing | |
| 07:50 | Islamic Law on all the people who were there, and especially | |
| 07:54 | me, where I was asked to make a geo-political analysis of all | |
| 07:58 | that was going on on French and English channels, so they could | |
| 08:02 | have a right of answering. —We are getting to what you experienced, | |
| 08:06 | you, personally, Jean-Pierre Marongiu, during this incarceration | |
| 08:10 | that — I’m reminding our audience — lasted almost five years, | |
| 08:13 | exactly 1744 days. Could you give us some details | |
| 08:19 | about that incarceration? Voilà, you say: “In prison you survive only by the distance | |
| 08:23 | that you manage to put in place between you and the others.” | |
| 08:27 | It’s the torch that keeps the wolves at bay. And as long as the torch is burning, | |
| 08:31 | you are safe. The day when the luminosity or intensity | |
| 08:35 | of the light diminishes, they devour you. |
Video transcript #3:
| 08:05 | We return to what you experienced, you personally, during | |
| 08:09 | this incarceration, which — I remind our audience — lasted almost | |
| 08:13 | five years: exactly 1744 days. Could you share with us | |
| 08:17 | some details of this incarceration. Voilà, you say: “In prison | |
| 08:21 | you survive only by the distance which you manage to install between | |
| 08:25 | us and the others.” —It’s the torch that keeps the wolves at bay. | |
| 08:30 | And as long as the torch is burning, you are safe. The day | |
| 08:34 | where the luminosity or the intensity of the light diminishes, | |
| 08:38 | they devour you. The torch is the principles. | |
| 08:42 | The faith in one’s self and the belief that finally | |
| 08:46 | the principles are going to save your life. | |
| 08:50 | I endured everything. I experienced Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan. | |
| 08:55 | in the Islamist environment which yelled Allahu Akhbar at every | |
| 08:59 | sentence of French victims. —You said, voilà: “ I was on hostile soil, | |
| 09:03 | territory.” —In enemy territory. — Enemy territory. | |
| 09:07 | So I fought physically, several times. I was stabbed, | |
| 09:11 | I tried to escape, I was shot at. At some point the order to eliminate me was | |
| 09:15 | given by the prison management. —One of your fellow detainees, I think, anyway, it was | |
| 09:19 | those Kosovars: one or several among them were assassinated during | |
| 09:24 | this escape attempt. —Absolutely. —“The loneliness is more, | |
| 09:28 | much more than a state of being: it’s a feeling and a torture.” —Yes. | |
| 09:32 | The loneliness comes to life, takes form. You find yourself alone, | |
| 09:36 | and finally alone with yourself and with your story. The introspection | |
| 09:40 | allowed me to stay afloat, to not go crazy. | |
| 09:44 | The writing. And above all different and various contrabands, | |
| 09:48 | which allowed me to buy clandestine phones with | |
| 09:53 | which I stayed connected with my family and to France. | |
| 09:57 | “I was attacking God, the Great Watchmaker of this entire | |
| 10:01 | bazaar.” You lost your faith? Are you a Christian, Jean-Pierre Marongiu? | |
| 10:05 | I am a Christian. I was often asked | |
| 10:09 | to convert to Islam, which would have made my sentence easier. | |
| 10:13 | I refused, despite the rage that I felt against God, | |
| 10:17 | who decides, while we have to endure. But as a Christian | |
| 10:21 | again — I have to keep my faith in the Light. | |
| 10:25 | You express a radical criticism of Islam. | |
| 10:30 | Could you explain to us, why it is even outright resentment? | |
| 10:34 | I would use the word “resentment”. When you are a Christian you shouldn’t | |
| 10:38 | resent this type of things. I am nevertheless human. Islam — contrary to what | |
| 10:42 | it was presented to us as — is not a religion of peace: it’s a religion of war. | |
| 10:46 | The Quran is a book that talks about peace | |
| 10:50 | on some pages, but the jihad is assassination, | |
| 10:54 | purely and simply, of all people who won’t submit to it. | |
| 10:59 | Islam means “slave”. —“Submission”? | |
| 11:03 | Could you tell us about that encounter with that imam, who | |
| 11:07 | who came to preach Muhammad to your prison, and who at first sight | |
| 11:11 | seemed to you to be a saint, Jesus, you were saying. —Yes. Charming. | |
| 11:15 | Resembling Jesus a little … —Well, we all have little images | |
| 11:19 | of the appearance that Jesus might have had: a tall man, with very fair skin, | |
| 11:24 | long hair, beard, a radiant smile full of goodness. | |
| 11:28 | We talked for a long time, and what he wanted to know was | |
| 11:32 | how they could change — in the West — the image of Islam. | |
| 11:36 | What wasn’t working with our perception | |
| 11:40 | of what Islam is? And when I explained to him that | |
| 11:44 | it was especially the image of women that | |
| 11:48 | was unacceptable to us, that there was no question | |
| 11:53 | of blowing yourself up with a bomb in order to go to Paradise, and get | |
| 11:57 | forty two virgins, or I don’t know anymore how many… —Seventy, I think | |
| 12:01 | Yes, it might be a sociability criterion. | |
| 12:05 | The more advanced you are in the Islamic hierarchy, the more | |
| 12:09 | virgins you get. In fact I have no idea. But it’s certain that there is a book [Quran] | |
| 12:14 | that was written, well — according to them— directly by god, | |
| 12:18 | but visibly Muhammad used it | |
| 12:22 | as a war book to mobilize his troops, create prayer times | |
| 12:26 | to make sure that in the morning people would be up and ready to go into combat. |
Clever, the prayer times getting people up to go to war. So hard to get people up otherwise.
Again, Qatar is nearly in a state of war with Saudi Arabia. Fortunately, the US leaders, the Trump family and others, have business ties with both Qatar and Saudi Arabia, so the US more or less leaves these Muslim countries to stew in their own juices, which is the appropriate stance to all intra-Muslim conflict.
US government deficit spending gives a huge entree to power and influence for the Muslim oil states. The US is supporting, with equipment and probably some troops, the Saudi incursion into Yemen, which is insane. But Saudi Arabia has the US over a barrel: if they stopped buying US treasuries, the built-in deficit spending would send the US into inflation, interrupting Trump’s bragging points of increasing employment.
To summarize: Qatar is an Islamist state with no laws and no justice, supporting Islamist law and sending protection money to fanatic Muslims groups who engage in terrorism. Opposing Qatar is Saudi Arabia, an Islamist state whose laws can be ignored at convenience by its rulers, no justice, supporter of Islamist laws, with a history of sending money to al Qaeda and other affiliated groups as an incentive to leave Saudi Arabia alone. I can see why the US would want to take one of these countries as an ally, in pursuit of US policy of exerting power and influence in far-off places.