“Breeding ground for terror”

SPIEGEL cover story: Islam’s holiest shrines, the world’s largest oil reserves, veiled women and playboy princes are all located here. Nowhere else do the medieval world and the modern age clash as they do in Saudi Arabia, the country where Osama bin Laden was born. Secret services have proof of the royal family’s involvement in the export of terror – and of intrigues with US politicians. Is an attack now threatened in Mecca?

“One only needs to kill one prince”

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with regime critic Saad al-Fakih about the struggle against the royal family and Osama bin Laden:

“The downfall of the royal house is not a matter of ‘whether’, but of ‘when’... I see it as probable that the monarchy will tear itself apart in the dispute on the succession... I do not wish to be compared with Osama bin Laden. Unlike me, he has a global project and he is battling for other objectives by other means... Yet after the end of the monarchy we want to have a transparent society with leaders responsible to the people and an economy that benefits everybody – naturally all this on the basis of an Islamic state.”

“An Ambassador with Bulging Pockets”

Portrait: Prince Bandar Bin Sultan is Saudi Arabia’s man in Washington – a man with the best of connections. The personal friend of Presidents Reagan, Bush Senior and Clinton is now trying to wrap George W. around his little finger. It helps that he can throw around millions in donations.

“The guerrilla aids the enemy”

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt shortly before she was kidnapped by rebels, when she spoke about the political world’s dependence on the drugs Mafia:

”Anxiety is part and parcel of politics but we should not allow ourselves to be cowed... The war on drugs is a farce. We wage war on innocent peasant farmers, making criminals of them and thus intensifying the social crisis in the country, yet the real drug dealers have nothing to fear. If we want to fight the Mafia, then we must break up its alliance with the political class... So far the state has only deployed the armed forces to protect the privileges of the ruling class and to infringe human rights.”

“Do it again, Sam!”

Once the idea was that they should develop the Smart as an electromobile. Now two Swiss handymen have made their old dream ripe for series production – by themselves. The “local traffic automobile” can do 85 kph, will run 70 kilometres without recharging and for 100 kilometres consumes just five kilowatt/hours of power – equivalent of half a litre of gasoline.

“Triumphing in the pack”

Psychiatry: SPIEGEL in-depth interview with psychiatrist Andreas Marneros on the role of ideology in extreme right wing violence, the personality of murderous neo-Nazis and the shamelessness of the accused:

“As a rule the perpetrators possess pathological personalities... All of them were responsible for what they did... All the culprits displayed extremely high aggression factors. At the same time these young men lack any capacity for relating to other people and their suffering. This appalling absence of empathy is really characteristic of right-wing violence... In an extreme way they lack any feeling of shame... I am in favour of our showing the culprits where the limits are right from the start. From my point of view, if possible no probationary sentences should be handed down.”

“The mothers are genuine”

China: Rapacious local businessmen are unscrupulously copying western branded articles. The authorities are powerless against the flood of imitations. Experts put the damage done to the economy in 1998 at 18 billion euros – not including pirate copies of books, CDs, medicaments and me-too cigarettes. By contrast, profit margins for the forgers are colossal, for among other things they save research and development costs. Many of the culprits lack any awareness of wrongdoing, for the concept of protecting intellectual property is also an import from the west and has only existed in China for a few years.

“The challenger”

Doping: In Turin the most successful soccer club in Italy is arraigned in court, in Florence it is the elite of European cycling. The man behind the hunt for doping transgressors is a restless public prosecutor. It was also him who tipped off the sleuths in the Olympic scandal surrounding cross-country skier Johann Mühlegg. Raffaele Guarinello aims to bring the message to the sporting world that doping is not some mere peccadillo, not a casual offence for top sportsmen, but swindle, fraud and a crime. To convince the players that chemical aids ruin their health, for some years Guarinello has been at work on a piece of scientific research. He is counting, analysing and collating cases of illness and death among cyclists and footballers. The survey is not yet quite complete but the preliminary findings are dramatic.