Abdullah I of Saudi Arabia (1 August 1924-23 January 2015) was King of Saudi Arabia from 2005 to 2015, succeeding Fahd I of Saudi Arabia and preceding King Salman I of Saudi Arabia.
Biography[]
Abdullah was born on 1 August 1924, one of the sons of King Abdulaziz I of Saudi Arabia (Abdulaziz Ibn Saud). Abdullah was made the commander of the Saudi National Guard in 1962 and he assumed the title of King of Saudi Arabia on 1 August 2005, and he possessed 18% of the world's oil. Abdullah was considered to be the king of the center of Islam, as Saudi Arabia had the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. He was the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, and although he was the leader of Islam's greatest nation, he arrested pilgrims of the Shia denomination of Islam and was responsible for human rights abuses. Under his rule, there was no penal code of Saudi government and defendants in trials could not question witnesses. Women still needed to have permission from men to work, study, travel, marry, or have an ID card, and the member of the Women's Rights Committee were all men. In addition, amputation was still a punishment for thieves and beheading was a punishment for murderers, rapists, adulterers, sorcerers, armed robbers, drug addicts, and converts from Islam to other religions. In 2014 he was responsible for sentencing human rights activist Nimr al-Nimr to death because of his Shia and human rights activism. He died on 23 January 2015 of pneumonia after a three-week hospitalization.