Bill Law

Bill Law is a Sony award-winning journalist. He joined the BBC in 1995 and since 2002 has reported extensively from the Middle East. He has travelled to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia many times. In 2003 he was one of the first journalists to cover the beginnings of the insurgency that engulfed Iraq. His documentary The Gulf: Armed & Dangerous which aired in late 2010 anticipated the revolutions that became the Arab Spring. He then covered the uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Bahrain. He has also reported from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Before leaving the BBC in April 2014, Mr Law was the corporation’s Gulf analyst. He now works as a freelance journalist focusing on the Gulf

May 23, 2020 | Bill Law
MBS and the kingdom of fear
21 May marked UNESCO’s World Day for Cultural Diversity and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a heavy contributor of UNESCO, released a beautifully shot and edited one-minute video that...
Published in: Article, Europe & Russia, International Organisations, Middle East, Opinion, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UN
May 4, 2020 | Bill Law
In memory of Alia Abdulnoor
On 4 May last year, an Emirati woman died in Abu Dhabi’s Tawam Hospital. Her name was Alia Abdulnoor. She died chained to a bed in a windowless room...
Published in: Article, Middle East, Opinion, Profiles, Syria, UAE
January 23, 2020 | Bill Law
A Downing Street coup for Egypt’s Sisi
Although the British media made little of it, the 21 January meeting at 10 Downing Street between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi was a...
Published in: Africa, Article, Egypt, Europe & Russia, Opinion, UK
September 19, 2019 | Bill Law
A new Amnesty report has harsh words for Qatar
“For five months I had to live with very little food and no salary. My family was really affected. Tears come to my eyes when I remember where we...
Published in: Amnesty International, Article, International Organisations, Middle East, Opinion, Qatar
June 27, 2019 | Bill Law
The steal of the century: stolen land, stolen water, stolen images
Jared Kushner and Benjamin Netanyahu must have considered it the longest of long shots but what if the Palestinians by some wild stretch of the imagination had called their...
Published in: Article, Asia & Americas, Israel, Middle East, Opinion, Palestine, US
May 24, 2019 | Bill Law
Jared Kushner’s peace deal: Sailing into failure
In early May Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and the lead architect of the so-called “deal of the century” gave a lengthy interview to Robert Satloff, the executive director...
Published in: Article, Bahrain, Israel, Middle East, Opinion, Palestine, UN, US
May 7, 2019 | Bill Law
Weaponising anti-Zionism to drive through the ‘deal of the century’
On 2 May Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, was playing his cards very close to the chest at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a...
Published in: Article, Asia & Americas, Europe & Russia, Israel, Middle East, Opinion, Palestine, Poland, US
March 27, 2019 | Bill Law
Saudi women activists return to court
On 27 March, 11 Saudi women return to court, among them some of the kingdom’s best known women’s rights activists including Aziza Al-Yousef, Loujain Al-Hathloul, Eman Al-Nafjan and Hatoon...
Published in: Article, Asia & Americas, Europe & Russia, HRW, International Organisations, Middle East, Opinion, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, US
March 22, 2019 | Bill Law
Women activists and 5 men who have disappeared in the Saudi prison system
With Human Rights Watch releasing a statement on 21 March on behalf of Saudi women activists brought to court in Riyadh a week earlier, world attention remains focused, and...
Published in: Article, Asia & Americas, Canada, Middle East, Opinion, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen
March 11, 2019 | Bill Law
The Middle East is armed and dangerous as never before
The latest data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on global arms sales, released on 11 March, is a sobering acknowledgement that the Middle East and, in...
Published in: Africa, Article, Asia & Americas, Canada, Egypt, Europe & Russia, Iran, Middle East, Opinion, Saudi Arabia, UK
February 9, 2019 | Bill Law
The UAE’s torture in the shadows
As the world’s media has once again picked up on the story of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s involvement in the brutal murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,...
Published in: Article, Middle East, Opinion, UAE
January 29, 2019 | Bill Law
In the time of Trump, repression flourishes in Bahrain
On 28 January, Bahrain’s Supreme Court upheld the conviction and life sentence of Sheikh Ali Salman, the leader of the banned opposition Al-Wefaq party. He, along with two colleagues...
Published in: Article, Asia & Americas, Bahrain, Middle East, Opinion, US
November 17, 2018 | Bill Law
An extraordinary tale of courage from a woman in jail in the UAE
It is a shocking two minutes and fifty-five seconds of audio that was smuggled out of Abu Dhabi’s Al Wathba prison. In the audio, a young female prisoner –...
Published in: Article, Middle East, Opinion, UAE
November 6, 2018 | Bill Law
Bin Salman is in a reckless race of his own making
Back in September, before the disappearance and murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul on 2 October, I came across a story...
Published in: Africa, Article, Asia & Americas, Bahrain, Canada, Egypt, International Organisations, Middle East, Opinion, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, UN
September 27, 2018 | Bill Law
The UAE and the Washington Post: Democracy dies in hypocrisy
If I was the Washington Post’s Ishaan Tharoor I would be a trifle annoyed. I enjoy his “Today’s World View” column on a daily basis. He is a very...
Published in: Article, Asia & Americas, GCC, International Organisations, Middle East, Opinion, Saudi Arabia, UAE, UN, US, Yemen
September 21, 2018 | Bill Law
Jared Kushner is wrong; collective punishment will not lead to peace
Last week, exactly 25 years after the signing of the Oslo Peace Accord, Jared Kushner commented on the punitive measures that his father-in-law, the President of the United States,...
Published in: Article, Asia & Americas, Israel, Middle East, Opinion, Palestine, US
August 6, 2018 | Bill Law
Bahrain’s economic crisis is an urgent sign that change must come
The warning signs are clear and unmistakable: the Kingdom of Bahrain is in serious financial difficulty and its economy is tumbling into crisis. The country’s bond ratings are listed...
Published in: Article, Bahrain, Middle East, Opinion
June 7, 2018 | Bill Law
Nabeel Rajab: a true patriot of Bahrain
On 4 June this year the Bahrain High Criminal Court of Appeal upheld a five-year sentence handed out to the prominent human rights defender Nabeel Rajab for tweets he...
Published in: Article, Bahrain, Middle East, Opinion
May 24, 2018 | Bill Law
Exploited and abandoned, the Palestinians are truly the betrayed
Writing in the New York Times less than a week after 61 Palestinians had been shot dead by Israeli soldiers, and nearly 3,000 were wounded, the political editor of...
Published in: Article, Asia & Americas, Israel, Middle East, Opinion, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, US
April 23, 2015
Netanyahu's fantasy
In Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 3 March speech to the US Congress he likened what was happening in the Middle East to the hugely popular American fantasy television...
Published in: Article, Israel, Middle East, Opinion, Palestine
November 24, 2014
Bahrain: What now?
In the parliamentary vote that took place on 22 November, the government of the Gulf island kingdom of Bahrain is claiming an unofficial turnout of nearly 52% while the...
Published in: Article, Bahrain, Middle East, Opinion
November 24, 2014
Qatar's bitter cup
Efforts by the QatarI authorities to reassure the world that all is well with its 2022 World Cup undertaking received a further setback on Wednesday when Amnesty International released...
Published in: Blog, Blogs - Politics, FIFA, Middle East, Qatar