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Burka Bandit Gets 3.5 Years for Robbing US Banks, Blames Submissive Upbringing

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On May 26, 2014 @ 11:04 am In The Point | 5 Comments

This is a rather strange story and I suspect Ranya Al-Huthaili had some good prepping from the best lawyers and consultants that Saudi money could buy. And she got off easily for 5 bank robberies. That’s not even a year per robbery.

Ericksen sentenced Ranya Al-Huthaili, 23, to 3½ years in prison.

Ranya Al-Huthaili, 23, admitted in her guilty plea in February that she hid behind large sunglasses and held up five banks in the Twin Cities and western Wisconsin from Aug. 15 until Sept. 9, threatening bloodshed while making off with more than $20,000 in total.

In a filing Tuesday in federal court in Minneapolis, the U.S. attorney’s office said Al-Huthaili lived “a life of privilege” until moving to the Twin Cities from Saudi Arabia with her mother at age 17.

“The defendant had maids and drivers to wait on her needs … counted princesses as her closest friends,” and had her tuition paid in full by the Saudi government plus $1,800 for personal expenses, prosecutors continued.

The family explained to law enforcement that Al-Huthaili was under the romantic spell of a new love interest who said he was desperate for money to buy his way out of the Mafia as a hit man and to pay for cancer treatment. She first loaned him $8,000 based on his “tales of woe,” and then started robbing banks, according to court records.

Court documents reflect Huthaili’s sentiments that Rubino did not ask her to rob the banks, in fact, it was reflected that he did not know she was planning on committing the robberies.

Huthaili’s lawyer described her as a “very naïve and dependent young woman” that is the product of being raised in Saudi Arabia and having a strict father.

“The psychological testing shows that she was trained her whole life to be submissive,” her lawyer, Daniel Scott, told the court during her sentencing trial.

Mary Zacharias, her voice cracking, told U.S. District Judge Joan Ericksen of her terror when the woman in dark glasses handed her a note that said she had a gun. “I thought I was going to die,” she said, and asked the judge to impose the maximum sentence.

Ericksen said she’d toyed with a shorter sentence, but noted Al-Huthaili had planned each robbery, and there was no indication that she’d have stopped her crime spree unless she’d been caught. “You were on a roll,” she told Al-Huthaili.

There’s one obvious problem with the whole story about her being an innocent naif manipulated by an evil boyfriend…

She was arrested on the day of the Menomonie robbery outside Rosedale Shopping Center after buying a laptop with the stolen money.

That wasn’t her helping her boyfriend get treatment or buy his way out of the mob. She was buying consumer electronics. And considering her lifestyle, if she had wanted money that badly, she could have gotten it from her family by making up a story.

She grew up as a member of an elite in a feudal society where people at her level are simply not accountable for anything. And she did it for the thrills. Now she’s playing a different part. A part she no doubt was used to playing in Saudi Arabia.

But the bank robbery was a lot closer to the real woman than her court performance.


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