Crown Casino whistleblower alleges gambling giant skirting ...

IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a place where misadventure could begin, you can’t go past Mbargo. The nightclub’s streetfront is painted a purple so bright you’ll see it in your dreams. Strings of giant sequins shimmer in the breeze. Its phonically inventive name is spelt in silver letters that climb its three-storey terrace facade. Inside are strips of burning neon, a few booths, floorboards so marinated in drink that they have an ingredients list. Bristol is a student city on England’s south coast crowded with music and nightlife and street art. This is Banksy’s home town, and the tourism board suggests in rather strong terms that ‘you would be a fool not to see his amazing work firsthand’. The same organisation describes Mbargo as ‘intimate’, which is fair for a place where you can catch an STI standing up. Students cram into its modest dimensions while people with names like DJ Klaud battle for billing with £1.50 drink deals over seven sloppy nights a week. To get a sense of the story about to come, consider that it’s the kind of place open until two o’clock on a Monday morning, and that at two o’clock on a Monday morning, Ben Stokes still thought it had closed too early.
The Ashes of 2017–18 had disciplinary bookends. It was after that series that Australia’s two leaders went off the rails in South Africa. It was a few weeks before that Ashes tour that England’s biggest star windmilled his way into his own disaster.
In the early hours of 25 September 2017, Stokes and teammate Alex Hales were barred from re-entering Mbargo after a night out on the piss. A Sunday thrashing of an abject West Indies in an ignored series at the fag-end of the season apparently required ample celebration. After arguing with the bouncer and hanging about at the door for a while, they wandered off to find a casino in the hope of more drinking. They’d barely made it around the corner before getting in the middle of a conflict between four locals. As is said on the internet, it escalated quickly.
The 26 September reporting was bloodless. Withholding names, police stated that a man ‘was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm’ while another went to hospital with facial injuries. England’s director of cricket Andrew Strauss separately confirmed that Stokes was the arrestee, adding that he had been released without charge and that Hales had gamely offered to ‘help police with their enquiries’. Administrators had a good chance of hiding behind that investigation, and the next day Stokes was named in the upcoming Ashes squad as expected. But that night the video emerged.
Bristol student Max Wilson had shot it on his phone, then offered it to The Sun. What he thought was playing hardball was actually lowball: his opening price of £3000 was snapped up by a tabloid that would have paid ten times that. The Sun went on to make a mint by syndicating the rights worldwide. From a window above the fray, the vision showed six men on the street below performing the muddled choreography of a melee. One was right at the centre of it. One was waving a bottle, one dipped in and out, one tried to calm it. Two others floated around the edges. The central figure was unmistakable: red hair burning even in the streetlight as he launched into a series of blows against two of the men, falling to grapple with them on the ground, then following both across the street, swinging punches the whole way. Hales trailed behind, repeatedly and impotently shouting ‘Stokes! Stop! Stokes! Enough!’ The ECB could fudge issues that existed only in thickets of legalese, but not those captured in moving colour. Stokes was stood down from the next West Indies match, then suspended indefinitely. It emerged that he had broken his hand during the fight, something he’d done twice before while punching objects in dressing rooms.
The response in Australia was fierce: Stokes was a thug, a lowlife, a selection that would disgrace England. It was not entirely coincidental that a ban for England’s best player would be handy for the Aussie team, but there was also a cultural split. In England, plenty of people still minimise pub fights as lads letting off steam. In Australia, heavy media coverage as a succession of young men were killed had inverted that tolerance. The discourse now saw any punch as potentially deadly and accordingly reckless. This was more poignant in a cricket context given that David Hookes, the dashing Test batsman and state coach, was killed in 2004 by a pub bouncer’s fist.
The PR situation was bad for Stokes as details emerged of the injuries to the men he’d hit, and that one was a young war veteran and father. Stokes wasn’t officially removed from the Ashes squad through October but stayed behind when his teammates left, hoping for police to dismiss the matter in time for a late dash to Australia. His annual contract was renewed on the due date in case that came to pass. Then 29 October brought a twist in the tale.
‘Ben Stokes praised by gay couple after defending them from homophobic thugs,’ ran the headline. Kai Barry and Billy O’Connell had emerged. Not entirely out of nowhere: while Stokes had made no public comment, this story in his defence had initially been leaked to TV host Piers Morgan after the fight, as soon as the video appeared. Police body-camera footage played in court would later show that Stokes had given the same story to the arresting officer on the night. But no-one knew the identities of the fifth and sixth men in the video, and police appeals had turned up nothing.
It was The Sun again with the breakthrough. Kai and Billy were perfect for a readership not keen on nuance. ‘We couldn’t believe it when we found out they were famous cricketers. I just thought Ben and Alex were quite hot, fit guys,’ said Kai, who was memorably described as a ‘former House of Fraser sales assistant’. The paper had the pair do a full photo shoot: layering the fake tan, showing off chest waxes, mixing Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton into a range of outfits. Their best shot had them standing back to back, heads turned to the camera, in a mirror-image Zoolander moment.
Suddenly The Sun was the England team’s best friend. ‘Their claims could lead to the all-rounder being cleared over the punch-up and freed to play in the First Test in Australia next month,’ it gushed, then gave a tasting platter of quotes: ‘We were so grateful to Ben for stepping in to help. He was a real hero.’ ‘If Ben hadn’t intervened it could have been a lot worse for us.’ ‘We could’ve been in real trouble. Ben was a real gentleman.’ Would it be known forever as Kai and Billy’s Ashes? No. While the Bristol boys provided spin for Stokes’ reputation they didn’t influence the police. With charges still pending there was little choice – not given Strauss had previously sacked Kevin Pietersen for being annoying. Stokes remained suspended through the Ashes and a one-day series in Australia, and lost the vice-captaincy. It was January 2018 before the Crown Prosecution Service laid a charge.
That charge surprisingly came in as affray, a crime that can carry prison time but is classified as ‘a breach of the peace as a result of disorderly conduct’. The men he had punched, Ryan Ali and Ryan Hale, faced the same count, charged as equal participants in a fight rather than Stokes being charged with assaulting them. Alex Hales was not charged, despite being seen in the video to aim several kicks when Ryan Ali was lying on the ground. Given the underwhelming standing of the offence, Stokes was cleared by the ECB to tour New Zealand, and kept playing until his trial in August 2018, which he missed a Test to attend. None of the three defendants would be convicted.
The reasoning behind the charges was never released and was attributed vaguely to ‘CPS lawyers’. The service gave the case to Alison Morgan, a prosecutor of a class known as Treasury Counsel who usually handle serious criminal matters. Morgan had a scheduling clash and never ended up court for the case, but in 2018 and 2019 she would go on to win damages and admissions of libel from The Daily Mail, The Times and The Daily Telegraph variously for incorrectly reporting that she had been responsible for the inadequate and inconsistent charging decisions.
Morgan’s successor on the case was Nicholas Corsellis QC, who on the first day of trial was permitted by the CPS to request two assault charges be added against Stokes. ‘Upon further review,’ claimed a CPS statement, ‘we considered that additional assault charges would also be appropriate.’ This was patent nonsense from the service that eight months earlier had chosen the lesser charge. Any lawyer knows that no judge will allow new charges once a trial has begun, because the defence hasn’t had time to prepare. But such a request could deflect criticism of the prosecution service by technically making the judge the one who disallows the charge.
Working through the story from the trial and the tape is complicated. You had a Ryan and a Ryan, a Hale and a Hales, a Billy and a Barry and a Ben. You had several versions of events as to who knew whom, who was drinking with whom, who had insulted whom and who had merely engaged in ‘banter’, a word that in modern Britain has to do an unconscionable amount of lifting. The reporting had constantly mixed up the Ryans as to who had which injury, who was in hospital, who had played which part in the fight, and whose mum had which stern words to say about it.
Let’s agree that from now Ryan Ali is Ryan One, the firefighter who ended up with a fractured eye socket and a cracked tooth. Ryan Two can be Ryan Hale, the soldier who scored concussion and facial lacerations. Mr Barry and Mr O’Connell are best known per The Sun as Kai and Billy. In scorecard parlance we’ll leave the cricketers as Stokes and Hales.
Amid the confusion, Stokes and his lawyers built his case in a straightforward way. The UK legal definition of affray is ‘if a person threatens or uses unlawful violence or force towards another person, which causes another person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for their safety’. That means it doesn’t account for violence that harms a target, but violence that might frighten a theoretical bystander. The wiggle room for Stokes was with ‘unlawful’, because the charge excuses violence in defending oneself or others.
This interpretation hinged on the beginning of the video, where Ryan One waves a beer bottle about and takes a swing at Kai. The version from Stokes was that he was minding his own business walking down the street when he heard homophobic abuse. He intervened verbally and was threatened verbally by Ryan One – something that Ryan One denied but that couldn’t be proved or disproved. In fear for his safety Stokes had to nullify that threat by bashing Ryan One before it went the other way. He registered Ryan Two in his peripheral vision as another possible threat, and again had only one recourse.
Stokes also had to convince the jury to disregard testimony from Mbargo’s bouncer that he had been looking for a fight. A solid lump of a man, Andrew Cunningham had not enjoyed his patron’s attempts to get back into the club after the bouncer declined an offer of a bribe. ‘He got a bit verbally abusive towards myself. He mentioned my gold teeth and he said I looked like a cunt and I replied, “Thank you very much.” He just looked at me and told me my tattoos were shit and to look at my job.’ Cunningham described these words as coming in ‘a spiteful tone, quite an angry tone’, and said that Stokes still seemed angry as he walked away.
These were details the doorman had nothing to gain by inventing, but each of them Stokes denied. By his own accounting he had drunk a beer at the game and three pints at his hotel, then ‘potentially had some Jägerbombs’ along with half a dozen vodkas at the club. He insisted that after all of this he was not drunk.
If I may take a moment here to call upon the wisdom of experience – a person who cannot definitively say whether they have had any Jägerbombs has definitely had some Jägerbombs. A Jägerbomb is an experience that does not pass one by. Further to that, a person who says they have ‘potentially’ done something has definitely done that thing and doesn’t want to admit it. A person who has had between 15 and 24 standard drinks in one evening is shitfaced. A person who tries to bribe a bouncer £300 – three hundred quid! – to get into Mbargo – Mbargo! – is beyond shitfaced.
If Stokes admitted that he was drunk then the prosecution could say he was out of control. He claimed clear recall of assessing a threat, feeling fear and deciding to protect himself with force. He confidently denied details from the bouncer’s testimony, like using the word ‘cunt’ or mentioning gold teeth. Yet on other details he claimed a ‘significant memory blackout’. He didn’t remember the punch that saw Ryan One taken away by ambulance. He didn’t remember what the Ryans had said to Kai and Billy, only that those words were homophobic. With no head injury, as one of the few people who hadn’t been hit, he had supposedly suffered this memory loss despite being sober.
The version from Kai and Billy was compatible but vague: they had been walking along, they ‘heard … shouts’ of abuse from an unspecified source, then Stokes ‘stepped in’ and thus they avoided possible harm. They claimed to have been bought a drink by Stokes at Mbargo, although CCTV showed them meeting outside. The overall implication from both accounts was that the cricketers had been pals with Kai and Billy, while the Ryans as per The Sun’s headline were a roving band of thugs.
The reality though is that the Ryans were the ones hanging out with Kai and Billy at Mbargo. Police discussed CCTV from inside the club in questioning and at trial. On that footage the four Bristolians bought drinks for one another, danced together, and Kai was noted to have variously touched Ryan Two’s crotch and Ryan One’s buttock. Ryan One told police that all of this was taken lightheartedly and wasn’t a problem. Indeed, when the Ryans called it a night the other two left with them.
This much is clear from footage out the front of Mbargo, which shows Kai and Billy exit the club and start talking with a subdued Hales and a demonstrative Stokes, who are stuck outside. The vision was played in court to determine whether Stokes was antagonistic towards Kai and Billy, as he appears to impersonate them and to throw a lit cigarette their way. More interesting is that after a few minutes the Ryans emerge, and all six actors in the fight video briefly form a prequel in the one frame.
Ryan Two pats Billy on the chest in friendly fashion with his right hand before clapping him on the back with his left. He moves past and does the same to Kai before leaving the shot. Ryan One stops to speak to Kai. They lean in for a moment, talking, then Kai turns and they walk out of frame together. Billy hangs around for a few seconds at the door and then looks after them and races to catch up. Stokes and Hales remain outside the club to remonstrate further with the bouncers. Whatever discord develops around the corner is between four men who left amicably together minutes earlier.
There’s no way to know what caused that friction. If Ryan One did use homophobic slurs, he might have been drunkenly obnoxious for no reason. He might have had an insecure macho response to some extra flirtation. He might have thought unkindness was funny – ‘banter’ once again. Or he might have said something that was misunderstood, as both Ryans insisted in court that they had not used nor had the impulse to use any abusive language.
What clearly didn’t happen was an attack by bigots on random passers-by. This kind of crime is regular enough that an audience understands the horror of it, and this is what was evoked by the public accounts of Stokes, Billy and Kai. All we know is that there was some verbal dispute among the Bristol locals, and that Stokes came along behind them and put himself in the middle of it. Ryan One responded to the interference aggressively and away they went. There are plenty of reasons to look sideways at the idea that Stokes was a saviour. Foremost, neither Kai nor Billy was called upon as witnesses in court. You’d think it would be ideal to have Stokes’ story backed up by those who benefited from his selflessness. But his defence team had developed the impression that the pair had shown a changeable recall of events amid a hard-partying lifestyle, and would be dismantled by the prosecution on the stand.
That raises the question of whether The Sun coached their quotes for the 2017 interview. Despite missing court, Kai and Billy clearly enjoyed the attention. In 2018 after the trial they did a follow-up spread in the same paper about how poor Ben had been mistreated. They got a television spot on Good Morning Britain and glowed about his heroism. In 2019 The Sun wheeled them out once more to say that Stokes should get a knighthood. In 2017 they had ‘never watched cricket’ but by 2019 were supposedly volunteering sentences like, ‘He saved us, now he’s saved the Ashes.’ Whether they were paid for these appearances is not known, but the chance to be famous for a day can be lure enough.
If you find this cynical, consider that on the night in question, the Bristol boys were so deeply moved and thankful for Ben’s intervention that they left him to be arrested and never attempted to find out who he was. Seconds after the video ended, an off-duty policeman reached the scene. You might think that someone grateful to a saviour would speak on his behalf. Instead, said Kai, ‘it all got a bit scary so we walked off. It was too much for me and we went to Quigley’s takeaway for chicken burgers and cheesy chips.’ They didn’t give their hero a thought for over a month while police issued multiple appeals for witnesses.
As for Stokes, he told his arresting officer that ‘his friends’ had been attacked. After three minutes of chat outside a nightclub, these friends were so dear to him that he has never contacted them again: not after the newspaper piece, not after the verdict. He didn’t want to see how they were or thank them for their support. He didn’t mention them by name in his solicitor’s statement after the trial.
The Stokes defence rested on Ryan One’s bottle, which he had carried out of Mbargo to finish a beer, not to use in a Sharks versus Jets amateur production. But once he turned it over to hold it by the neck it became a weapon. Intent and interpretation can change the material nature of things. Part of Stokes’ justification in court was that the bottle implied that the two Ryans might have ‘other weapons’ hidden away. You can understand how a jury could decide that created doubt.
Not being convicted, though, doesn’t give the contents of the video a big green tick. It does not, as his lawyer claimed, vindicate Stokes. Looking in detail, Ryan One is belligerent but his movements telegraph a bluff. Hales is the person he’s gesturing at, but they’re several metres apart when Ryan One cocks his arm ostentatiously, showing off the bottle rather than bracing to swing. He skips forward but Hales skips back and Ryan One doesn’t follow. Kai stretches out an arm to impede Ryan One, who has a drunken stumble, nearly eats pavement, then staggers towards Kai and hits him in the back. That hand is still holding the bottle, but his strike is a side-arm cuff on a soft part of the body. It’s all pretty tame.
This is where Stokes gets involved. Having moved across to protect Hales, he now takes three large steps to run around Kai and booms his first punch at Ryan One. They fall to the ground and the bottle clinks away. Stokes gets to his feet to punch down at the fallen man, while Hales arrives to kick him ineffectively then runs off across the street for some unknown reason. Ice-cream van? Stokes is soon back in the grapple having his shirt pulled up to show off his Durham tan. Ryan Two steps in for the first time to pull Stokes away, prompting a couple more random punches at this new target, then Stokes trips backwards over Ryan One and sprawls in the street. Hales chooses this moment to return and aim some solid kicks at the head of the man on the ground. Nothing so far is a triumph of moral philosophy or the pugilistic arts. But if it all stopped here, perhaps you could say it was somewhere approaching fair. Ryan One has behaved like a turnip and it’s not an entirely unjust world that would give him a whack across the chops. The antagonists have disentangled, Stokes has some distance, it’s time to dust off and go home. Ryan Two steps forward for this purpose with his palm raised in conciliatory style and says, ‘Settle down, stop.’
So Stokes punches him.
It’s roughly his fifth punch overall, and he really winds up into this one. He misses so hard that he stumbles away into the shadows of the shop awnings along the road.
Hales starts shouting for him to stop. Ryan Two backs into the street, still holding his palm up. Stokes closes on him from about five metres away, six large steps, to where Ryan Two is standing on his own. Stokes pushes him a couple of times, as Ryan Two keeps trying to placate him and saying ‘Stop.’ Stokes throws his sixth punch, largely missing as his target ducks.
Ryan Two keeps pulling away and reversing, into the middle of the street now. Stokes follows him, grabbing his sleeve to drag him back. By this point Ryan One has found his feet and walked around behind his friend. Both of them are in the same line of sight for Stokes, and both are backing away. Stokes aims his seventh and his eighth punches, which Ryan Two tries to deflect, as Hales walks up behind Stokes to grab him.
Stokes yanks away from his friend and switches to Ryan One instead, taking seven paces to grab him before throwing his ninth punch of the night. He grabs again; Ryan One blocks that arm and pushes himself back away from Stokes. Ryan Two again intercedes, putting himself between the two with his palms up and his arm extended.
Stokes throws his tenth punch, a right-hander at the face of Ryan Two, then shoves him backwards. Ryan Two backs away once more, four paces. Stokes follows, steadies, lines up, then launches his strongest punch yet, his eleventh, a proper right hook from a solid base, one that cracks across the man’s head and gives him concussion. Ryan Two ends up flat on his back in the middle of the street, his hands still outstretched for a moment in useless protest until they twitch and drop to the blacktop.
Stokes isn’t done. He once more shoves away the restraining Hales and follows Ryan One, who keeps backing away saying, ‘Alright, alright, alright.’ Five more paces from Stokes before another blow at the man’s head. Kai and Billy are now standing over the poleaxed Ryan Two. The video ends, but seconds later Stokes will punch Ryan One hard enough to knock him out too, before off-duty cop Andrew Spure arrives on the scene to bring down the curtain. When the body-camera footage kicks in some minutes later, Stokes is in handcuffs but Ryan One is still laid out in the street. Ryan Two has regained consciousness, folded his shirt under his friend’s head and is asking police for an ambulance.
‘At this point, I felt vulnerable and frightened. I was concerned for myself and others.’ This was how Stokes described that sequence to the court. An elite athlete with years of gym work and training to snap a bat through the line of a ball with astounding power and precision, swinging fists as hard as he can at men with none of those advantages. Punching so hard that he breaks his hand, and repeatedly shoving away a friend so he can punch some more. Frightened and threatened by two targets shouting ‘Get back!’ and ‘Stop!’
The off-duty officer testified that Stokes ‘seemed to be the main aggressor or was progressing forward trying to get to’ Ryan One, who was ‘trying to back away or get away from the situation’. The student who filmed the video can be heard on the tape at one stage exclaiming ‘Fuck!’ and testified that it was because ‘I felt a little bit sorry about the lad that had been punched and it looked like he had his hands up’. That tallied with the prosecutor’s depiction of ‘a sustained episode of significant violence that left onlookers shocked at what was taking place’.
The defendant stuck to his strategy. ‘No, my sole focus was to protect myself.’ All up, in the 33 seconds of footage after he falls over, Stokes takes 35 steps forward to keep hitting two men who keep trying to get away. Not once is he hit back.
After the verdict, Stokes’ solicitor positioned him as the victim. It had been ‘an eleven-month ordeal for Ben … The jury’s decision fairly reflects the truth of what happened that night … He was minding his own business … It was only when others came under threat that Ben became physically engaged. The steps that he took were solely aimed at ensuring the safety of himself and the others present …’ The statement was impossibly self-righteous and self-absorbed.
If there was anyone to feel sorry for it was Ryan Hale, the second of our two Ryans. He’s the one who emerged from the club with a friendly arm around the shoulder for Kai and Billy. He’s the one who interposed himself to end the fight, then kept putting himself back in the firing line, trying to calm an intimidating stranger while dodging blows. For his show of restraint he got laid out regardless, concussed in the street, then was issued a criminal charge equal to that of the man who hit him, and described in national media as a violent bigot in an untested story to support that man’s defence.
Lawyers for Ryan Two made a more convincing post-trial statement, noting that Kai and Billy, ‘neither of whom were relied upon by the prosecution or the defence team for Mr Stokes, have taken the opportunity to speak with various media outlets about the alleged homophobic abuse that they received in the early hours of September 25. Mr Hale has passionately denied this allegation throughout the course of this case,’ it continued.
‘It is upsetting to Mr Hale that although he was acquitted, the accusation that he was the author of such abuse remains. Both Mr Hale and Mr Ali were knocked unconscious by Mr Stokes, and although Mr Stokes has been acquitted of an affray, Mr Hale struggles with the reasons why the Crown Prosecution Service did not treat him as a victim of an unlawful assault.’Good question. Avon and Somerset police were the investigating force, and they were frustrated by the decision. Ryan Two was filmed clearly not hurting anyone, but police were instructed by the CPS to proceed with a charge. Hales (the cricketer) was filmed fighting but ‘a decision was made at a senior level of the CPS’ not to proceed. Police expected Stokes to be charged with assault but the CPS declined. It doesn’t take a wild cynic to think that placing the same lukewarm charge on three men for vastly divergent behaviour might ensure that none would be convicted, even as the trial would maintain the pretence that a defendant of influential standing had not been given a free pass.
A couple of years down the line, the original interview with Kai and Billy has disappeared. All traces have been scrubbed from The Sun website, its social media history, and even from the Wayback Machine internet archive. Given its headline of ‘homophobic thugs’ and text that names Ryan Two but not Ryan One, the libel liability isn’t hard to spot. Later interviews with Kai and Billy take the passive voice – they ‘suffered homophobic slurs outside a Bristol nightclub’.
The article that was once claimed to exonerate brave Ben Stokes now links only to a missing content page, with a picture of a dropped ice-cream cone and the phrase ‘legal removal’ inserted into the web URL. In terms of consequences, Stokes missed one tour. When he resumed his career in January 2018, the Australians hadn’t yet ruined theirs. Their year-long bans looked much more stringent. But the Stokes case dragged on in other ways. With no criminal liability, the Australians confessed promptly enough for the sporting world to give them the full length of the lash. Their situation was ugly but there was closure. Stokes got stuck in legal stasis, unable to be fully backed or condemned. Instead his issue was always present, a browser full of open tabs that the ECB swore they would read any day now.
Through 2018 Stokes was back but he wasn’t back, in the sunglasses and finger-guns sense. In his return one-day series he nearly cost England a match with 39 from 73 balls in Wellington. His first Test hit was a duck as England got rolled in Auckland for 58. At Trent Bridge while Stokes was injured, England posted a world record 481 against Australia. With Stokes three weeks later at the same ground they made 268. He crawled to 50 from 103, the second-slowest any Englishman had reached that milestone in 20 years. That span covered Alastair Cook’s whole career. It was apologetic batting, acting out responsibility via the scorecard. Stokes was creeping back into the team like he’d been kicked out in a blazing row and was hoping to tip-toe to the sofa.
It was December 2018 before the ECB disciplinary committee ruled on him and Hales. In a ‘remarkable coincidence’, wrote Simon Heffer in The Telegraph, ‘the punishment both players faced in terms of bans from playing at international level was covered by the amount of games they had already missed when dropped by England’s selectors, in the furore that followed the incident’. The verdict compounded the omissions around the case by not addressing the violence at its heart. Nor did Stokes, apologising only ‘to my team-mates, coaches and support staff’, and then ‘to England supporters and to the public for bringing the game into disrepute’.
The implicit next step was to rebuild that reputation. It might have been easier had his court defence not meant that he wasn’t game to admit any fault at all. It might have been easier if he or his advisers had been willing to change tack once the trial was done. Imagine a world where Stokes had stood outside court and apologised for overreacting, for the injuries he’d caused, and for the time and energy he had sucked out of other people’s lives. That would have been a show of responsibility beyond a scorecard. When the time came around to assess forgiveness, it might have meant forgiveness was deserved.

It was around noon on New Year's Eve, 2014 when the staff of the Future Inns hotel in the Welsh city of Cardiff, discovered a body in room 203. The duvet had been pulled over her head, an ottoman had been pulled from its normal position, and blood stained bedding and towels had been hidden out of sight in the bathroom. It was the body of Nadine Aburas.
The horror of the situation quickly became evident as police were called and the investigation to find Nadine's killer quickly became an international manhunt. Almost two years later, American businessman Sammy Almahri was jailed for seventeen years for murdering Nadine, whom he called his “ex-girlfriend”. The New York City resident was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of 17 years, after admitting murder on the second day of his trial at Cardiff Crown Court. The court hear that shortly after committing the murder, Almahri left the crime scene at the Future Inns hotel in the early hours of the morning and made his way to Heathrow Airport, before purchasing a seat on the next flight to Qatar in a bid to escape justice. The police operation that followed was one of the most complex faced by South Wales Police in it’s entire history.
But, despite Almahri being thousands of miles away, they were able to track him down to the east African nation of Tanzania, before bringing him back to Wales to face the consequences of his barbaric actions. During the manhunt, investigating officer and chief negotiator, Detective Chief Investigator Gareth Morgan, conducted a number of conversations with Almahri as he attempted to remain one step ahead of the authorities. Sammy Almahri met his victim, Nadine Aburas, on the online dating site MuslimMatch.com, way back in 2012. The couple quickly developed a long-distance relationship through phone calls and Skype, with Almahri making multiple trips to Nadine’s home city of Cardiff during 2013. Nadine visited him in New York the following summer, with the tryst apparently continuing despite the strain of the long distance. However, something happened in New York City, something that has never fully come to light. But what we do know, is that Nadine later told New York State police that Almahri had sexually assaulted her. After she returned to the UK, he continued to send her threatening text messages and emails, with one particularly disturbing message reading, “I have been calling you a lot. I will never ever stop now or give up. I will harm you”.
Sammy Almahri then flew over to the UK to visit Nadine around the holiday period in 2014, apparently in some attempt at reconciliation. We will never know if Almahri’s intentions were pure, but whatever the case, we know he was told to leave the country following a heated argument with Nadine's brother.
However, instead of getting the train back to London and hopping on the next plane from Heathrow to New York, as Nadine and her family expected him to, Almahri booked himself into the Future Inns hotel in Cardiff Bay. He then proceeded to call Nadine and asked her to come to the hotel, telling her he had left his passport and phone at her house and that he needed them returned so he could leave the country. Likely keen to get Almahri out of her hair, Nadine obliged and set off from the family home, arriving at the hotel close to 9.10pm. CCTV in the hotel lobby shows that Nadine immediately went to Almahri's room, number 203. At around 10pm that night, Nadine and Almahri left the hotel and went by taxi to the ‘Lilo Grill-house’ (named after the Disney character) on City Road, Cardiff. Restaurant staff later claimed that the couple’s body language was “not good” and they were described as shouting and arguing. One of the staff members was later reported to have said that “something wasn’t right”. They stayed at the restaurant for just less than an hour and lobby CCTV has them arriving back at the Future Inns just after 11pm. That was the last time Nadine was seen alive.
At around midnight Almahri left the room to head to the nearby Grosvenor Casino and returned shortly before 1am. A few hours later, Almahri left the Future Inns hotel for good. Before leaving he approached bar manager Peter Morris and asked directions to the nearest highway that would take him to the airport. He said he had left a Do Not Disturb sign on the door because his ‘sister’ was still sleeping. At 12.20pm on New Year’s Eve the duty manager entered room 203 and discovered Nadine’s body. Hotel staff then called the police who arrived and began their investigation. Det Chief Insp Morgan, who led the operation, told the news media, “at 12.30pm, we received a report of a female found deceased in a room of the Future Inns and, you can imagine it wasn't clear what we were dealing with, but it became quite evident that it was a homicide”. “We did some inquiries and found out the room was booked to Sammy Almahri and after doing some research we found a previous incident regarding him – there had been a bit of a link there. He had paid with his card and found out he didn't reside in the UK and Fastcheck told us he was up in the air on a flight to Qatar. It was very fast-moving. Almahri had murdered a girl in Cardiff and the next afternoon he's in Qatar and on his way to Tanzania. It's unbelievable that can happen”.
Investigating police then found handwritten letters in hotel room 203, which were addressed to Almahri and signed with the name Nadine. But these were later determined to be penned by Almahri due to the letter's use of the American system of writing dates, as opposed to the regular British format. DCI Morgan added that “there was a legal framework we have to deal with for an international arrest. You have to show the Crown Prosecution Service and Interpol that you have the evidence for a case to allow a Red Notice to be put in place to give legality to the country of jurisdiction to arrest him. We knew
that wasn't going to happen in just three hours. We had to gather intelligence about what he was doing and where he was”. While police were still trying to figure out a way to bring Almahri in, things took an unexpected turn when the killer contacted the hotel from the deceased Nadine's phone and, surprisingly, actually asked to speak to the police himself. According to DCI Morgan, “Almahri took Nadine's phone and laptop with him. He phoned the hotel and told them they needed to look in room 203 because he was worried about his friend. He spoke to a detective and was asking if she was okay. The call became weird and a negotiator – me – was deployed. Almahri lied and lied and said he tried to help her kill herself and he didn't know she was dead. It was quite bizarre. He was concerned about her being buried. The negotiation was to secure a safe arrest and stop him from causing harm to another person. It was clear he was lying about his location. "He was telling me he was in Havana, Cuba, that he would hand himself in to the authorities, but he was intoxicated and in a room with a woman. He said he was going to do the same thing to her as what he did to Nadine. It was high-risk and we weren't in control. We knew he was in Tanzania but locating him with precision was difficult."
The seemingly distraught Almahri told Police he was planning to commit suicide because he couldn’t bear to live without Nadine. He went on to say that when they got back to the hotel room, he was stunned when Nadine had asked him to kill her. Almahri told police, “she said that she’d been waiting for the right moment to go to the saints. I strangled her. I strangled her for more than five minutes. I was scared.” He later asserted to interviewing police that Nadine had tried to strangle herself, but when he left for the airport she was definitely still breathing. He ended the conversation with the chilling statement, “I am ending my life today. I am sorry to the family.” In a another call to DCI Morgan, Sammy Almahri said he was going to hand himself into the American embassy in Puerto Rico, which he claimed was his next destination. He later said he was lying and wasn’t going to hand himself in, inquiring if the British penal system included the Death Penalty, which it does not. He told DCI Morgan, “I want the death penalty because I want to die. I have a gun with nine bullets and I can shoot myself. I didn’t mean to kill her and I love her, you know, but she asked me to help her die.” This was the last phone call police received from Almahri. “The conversations were certainly strange” DCI Morgan later explained. “He would go from being quite calm to irate. He was unstable for sure but I would put that down to intoxication – I sensed he was under the influence of drink. The key thing was to control the evidence gathered in the UK. We looked at that and focused on the processes here. We had evidence of him coming over to the UK.” "He had a dispute with Nadine's brother and he dropped his mobile phone, which we were able to find and examine. He was huge on the internet so we gathered lots of intelligence about the background of the relationship and his possessive, jealous, coercive and threatening behaviour and answerphone messages which were highly threatening.”
“We had his movements and the conversations – all the evidence towards the murder was developing really well. We were able to get that international arrest warrant in place but the time of year didn't help with people being on leave and having to deal with the different timeframes. We had to make sure we had the resourcefulness and resilience to keep South Wales Police business as usual and to manage the investigation, especially for the hotel, and to go about our job sensitively and professionally as possible”.
On the 2 nd of January, 2015, Almahri began contacting Nadine's friends and family, as well as posting on the wall of her Facebook account. Almahri also sent a text message to Nadine’s mother, one which stated “I know how you feel, let her go. I love her too. It’s your f****** son.” He later text her: “I promise to you, Nadine, my life. I see her soon. I can’t live with this anymore, I love her”. Det Chief Insp Morgan explained how these texts complicated their investigation. “This caused serious upset to people and managing that was really difficult. It was very difficult because we couldn't control what was going on over there but he was continuing to use her phone and we were able to identify he was in Tanzania. We went to the media who were a great help and we issued a press appeal. That went global and had a lot of air time in Tanzania which put pressure on Almahri and we started to get information. What we did was send a couple of South Wales Police officers out to Tanzania and they did a sterling job – there was a lot of international pride involved."
Despite their best efforts, the international Police search for Almahri was proving unfruitful and Nadine's family were told they could be facing a long wait for justice. But on January 19 th , 2015, Almahri was suddenly located in the town of Iringa in Tanzania, where he had family, and was detained. Less than three weeks after his escape from the UK Almahri's period of running from the law was finally over , but there was still an incredibly long way to go with Almahri's extradition back to the UK not taking place until the 23 rd of March, almost two months later. Detective Chief Inspector Morgan was one of the officers dispatched to east Africa to bring Almahri back to the UK and place him under arrest for Nadine's murder. He said: “When we met he was a charming and intelligent person. He was quite manipulative. He was smartly dressed and very confident when we eventually met him and I described him as a Walter Mitty character. He was well turned out when we met him and that's the perception he wanted to give to Nadine and the family – someone who was a successful businessman – but I don't think that was the case. He didn't really comprehend what was going to happen. I don't know whether he thought someone was going to buy him out but he was very chatty, friendly and confident – until we got to Heathrow where he was booked into custody and charged with murder and then we saw a real difference in him.”
After a series of preliminary hearings at Cardiff Crown Court, in which Almahri shockingly pleaded ‘not guilty’ to a murder he had all but admitted to, a trial date was set for the 19 th of October, 2016, and was due to last a number of weeks. But after the first day of the trial when the case was opened and piles of evidence laid out, Almahri changed his plea to guilty and he was sentenced on November 3. Nadine's mother Andrea Aburas' heart-breaking victim impact statement was read to the court, “by taking Nadine the defendant has taken the glue that made this family. We allowed him to come into our family and instead he took from us my child. Life will never ever be the same. No sentence that could be given to this man could compare to the sentence he has given to us. He has destroyed us."
After the sentencing she read a statement outside the court thanking the police and Crown Prosecution Service for their "hard work" in prosecuting Almahri. She added: "It is unimaginable for us as a family to understand the heinous crime that has been committed. We will continue to remember Nadine and the joy that she brought to us but our lives will never be the same.

Algerida 2035: National Renewal Megaproject

President Sa'adi has announced a new megaproject to couple with the national housing overhaul that will change Algiers forever. President Sa'adi has proposed the creation of a megalopolis to expand from Algiers, Oran, and Tiaret. The new megalopolis, slated to be called Algerida, is the proposed capital of the Islamic Republic of Al-Maghreb, and to be the most modern city in the Middle East when completed. The project will be massive and cost around $100 Bn, to be built in 10 years. However, for Algeria's future, there is no cost to great to launch us into the next era. President Sa'adi envisions a city with world-class universities, casinos, a vibrant trade port, a booming financial center, high-class tourists, and factories outside of the city limits-churning Algeria forward. Without a doubt, in recent years, Algeria has made leaps and bounds towards a brighter future, but this will be the crowning achievement for all of Algeria's time. It is one thing to claim to be the utopia for Muslims, it is another to actually give it to them.

Algerida's Residential Development

Already announced but under a different name, Algerida's massive apartment residential complex developments are already underway. This urban renewal process will begin replacing the old with the new to completely change the Algerian lifestyle. With the street side stores that are built into the residential blocks, while also featuring underground parking garages, downtown life will be more vibrant than ever before. Citizens will now be able to purchase services, food, and small items through small privately owned businesses within the first two floors of the residential developments on the street side. The previously mentioned underground parking will clean the Algerian streets of vehicle, trash and pollution clutter. With the Algerian National Police strictly enforcing the urban ban on roadside parking, it should fix the problem for good, and trafficking will be smoother sailing rolling forward. These new residential developments will have access to natural gas, 5G services from nearby towers, 10 gigabyte internet speeds, running water, and air-conditioning as a utility. For many Algerians, this is luxury they have never had before. Each apartment building we be on average 25 stories tall and be built in districts of like models, all will feature both stairs and at least two elevators. The roof tops of the apartment building developments will be fashioned with solar panels and connecting to the Algerida grid through transformers to store and use the energy gradually through the day time, and open up the reserves at night time- living in the desert does have its perks. Additionally, power from the tiered-hydro dams as part of the desalination river project will be the primary contributor to the new grid. To combat pollution and dust, Algeria will be working with contractors from China to build air purifier towers in the center of each apartment residential district to clean the air out for the local residents. Needless to say, each residential district will have its own Elementary School, Middle School, and High-School all within close proximity to the air purifier towers within the residential district. Algerian National Police will have at least two precincts to each residential district to ensure proper community policing and compliance with traffic laws. The local roads will also have to be upgraded to connect the proposed regions of Algerida together. Most main roads in the residential districts will be 8 lanes wide featuring signs in both Arabic and French. The main roads will have traffic lights, but at the midpoint between each traffic light on major roadways, sky walkways will be built over the road for pedestrians to traverse peacefully across the roads. The sky walkways will use ramps on the side with small stairs in the middle to cater to disabled citizens. In addition to the traffic lights, a small shaded concrete pedestal will be erected for Algerian National Police Traffic Enforcement Officers who will guide traffic on a permanent basis with their arms and whistle. Additional officers will be necessary to assist in school-crossings Monday through Saturday. The walled communities will have a security checkpoint at both ends to be accessed both by on foot and by vehicle, where in between all the apartments in the district is a small communal park. The security checkpoint will be required to log in visitors and have the resident who invited them come down to escort them to the residence. Only keys and parking passes will be given to residents, however visitor vehicles that are not electric scooters or bicycles/skateboards can purchase a $20 parking ticket to allow them to use the underground parking garages. The security checkpoints will be managed by the Ministry of Public Safety. Vehicle license plates and pictures of the driver will be taken when vehicles come and go that are not resident vehicles, otherwise, resident vehicles will already have their vehicle logged in with the public security officers at the residential check point. There is no specific metal detector or shake-down security at the entrances, just scanning the gate access with a residential card, the card will show the Ministry of Public Safety officers a picture on their screen that they will visually match with the face. The card will open the gate regardless. Public Safety officers will patrol the apartment district both during the night and day time to assist residents and ensure the area is secure. All mail will be delivered to an apartment district mail sorting house that all the residents can visit to collect their mail, near the entrances to the districts. The mail boxes are free of charge, and come with living in the districts. International shipping will cost, domestic shipping is paid for. Each residential district will have one major hospital, while each apartment block will have a small clinic with maybe one doctor and five nurses on staff for a range of services. All dentistry, and specialized services are done at the hospital. Private businesses can rent out the rooms on the first floor to open up street side businesses, making small thrive-able communities within the city. CCTV cameras will be placed around the inside of the Apartment block and serve as a way to assist the Public Safety officers in their patrols.

Algerida's Air Markets

Air Markets at one point in time was a crucial part of Algerian culture, and that has not passed away with history for many. President Sa'adi sees no reason why the new megalopolis cannot have these air markets, however he acknowledges they are usually quite dirty, and give a bad image on a clean and prosperous city. Nonetheless, there is a happy medium that can be met in order to keep the city efficient, and the streets clean. Algerida will allocate large plots of land on roadsides where the open air markets can be organized so they are not directly on the street side. The stall owners can apply for a permit at no charge to set up their stall and request at which air market they wish to operate, and they will be given a set space to keep their stall and set up permanently. This way, Algerians and tourists alike can visit these open air markets and enjoy them as a crucial piece of Algerian history, while not detracting from the efficiency of the city. The air markets are largely unregulated, and mostly un-policed, with the exception of annual food inspections, and the occasional narcotics sweeps. Officers will still be accessed to make the occasional patrol through the market and break up fights and ensure there is no gang-affiliated operations, but will not interfere with the private business functions or their products.

Algiers Financial District as part of Algerida

Recently, the Algerian State Construction Engineering Corporation has begun constructing their new headquarters, called ASCEC Tower just south of Rue Tripoli in Algiers- in the new Algiers Financial District. Rue Tripoli in Algiers as part of Algerida will become the new financial district. Large state-owned companies like Air Maghreb, NaseebChat, and many other electronic and corporate manufacturing giants have begun setting up their own headquarters on Rue Tripoli, overlooking the Mediterranean. When it is complete, Rue Tripoli Street will become the postcard image of the new Algeria. A bright night sky filled with colors of bright LED lights. Soon Air Maghreb Tower, Algeria State Broadcasting Tower, and NaseebChat Corporation Headquarters will tower above Algerida and show of the many homegrown successes of Algeria's own corporations. By day they will flex power, money, innovation, and creativity, and by night- they will light up the sky. Other companies such as AliTel, Halim Group, Kazim Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, and many others will also be setting up their own headquarters on Rue Tripoli.

The Mighty Universities of Algerida

Now holding some of the most influential universities in Algeria such as: University of Algiers, and Oran University, Algerida will hold a lot of sway over the dreams of Algerian students. However, if Algerida really wants to compete on the world-stage, it will have to attract talent from all over the world, and build new universities with new programs to stimulate the minds. It would also mean, Algeria would need to create some new universities to be apart of "Allah League," a play on Ivy League to describe prestigious American universities. The "Allah League" in Algeria will consist of the new constructed schools:

• Sa'adi Military University
  
• National Algerida University
  
• Zekkal University of Science and Technology
  
• Fergani University
  
• The Hamina University of Business
  

Other universities from around the world are being encouraged to apply to build an extended university campus in Algerida before there is no longer any space. To jump start these “Allah’s League” universities, it will take a considerable amount of money because the school must be built, faculty must be hired, contracts need to be signed. However, for our young people, there is no expense too many. Algerians should have some of the best faculty and researchers from around the globe, and there is no place better to look than the rapidly developing China. China is cranking out teachers and professors faster than it knows what to do with them- and Algeria says- we will help you if you help us. The Algerian Ministry of Education has reached out to the Chinese Ministry of Education and delivered them a stack of contracts for temporary senior faculty positions to build an Ivy League from the ground up. Of course, these contracts will last while students learn and become professionals until they can eventually become professors themselves and truly embody a homegrown Ivy League, for the academic elite- but until then, we will learn from our best friend. The Sa’adi Military University will specialize in creating 2nd Lt. officers out of high-school for the Army, Navy, and Air Force, to become the best of the best for the Algerian Armed Forces, to comprise of PLA visiting leadership. The National Algerida University will be the all purpose university with a focus on international relations, political science, humanities, foreign languages, education, fine arts and music, Sunni theology, urban planning, things of that nature. The National Algerida University will have a mix of both local and Chinese professors. The Zekkal University of Science and Technology will be the STEM school, aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, software development, electronics manufacturing development, maritime and nautical engineering studies, aviation sciences, cyber security, biology, chemistry, environmental policy, environmental engineering, sustainability studies. The Fergani University is the Algerian Law School, and school for law enforcement. Zekkal University will likely need a large amount of foreign faculty to begin. Police, prospective attorneys, intelligence services, prospective students in international laws would all seek out Fergani University. Fergani University can be comprised of domestic educators. The Hamina University of Business will be the official business school of Algeria teaching things like finance, accounting, human resources, business administration, industrial management, industrial programming, business law, petroleum business, aviation business, electronics and synthetic manufacturing. The Hamina University of Business will seek field experts from all over the world.

Algerida Industrial Sector

Algerida’s industrial sector will be built south of Chlef to Tiaret. Current manufacturing giants in Algeria will be expanding their operations exponentially in the area to create thousands of job opportunities moving into the future. Additionally, Algeria is going to push the manufacturing of simple goods to couple the growing field of complex manufacturing. The sectors Algeria will push during the creation of the massive Algerida Industrial sector will be textiles, furniture, foodstuffs, building materials, semiconductors, and desalination equipment. Algeria is currently undergoing a massive economic transition as it aims to push all petroleum exports well below 50% by 2030 in an effort to diversify the economy, and the Algerida Industrial Sector will be one of the major draws for Algerians and other arabs to Algerida to work, as it will be the largest collection of factories and manufacturing facilities in Northern Africa- a key branching point to nations in the EU and Asia. The Algerida Industrial Sector will have very low business tax, with wide 8 lane roads to allow for ease of logistical transportation.

Port of Oran Upgrades

Mers El Kebir Heavy Industries Co, Ltd, the major shipbuilder and subworks that was built at Port Oran have been the latest addition to the port authority, however Port Oran needs to be significantly expanded to be able to service high-capacity exporting. The goal for the Port of Oran is to handle 30.05 million TEUs annually, setting Port Oran below Shanghai and Singapore’s capacity, but just ahead of Shenzhen. The port will need to expand exponentially to support the following: 50 berths for vessels with 10,000 tonnes deadweight and above, 23 non production berths, 18 passenger ferry berths, 9 consignee berths, and 20 container berths. Additionally, Quay Crane length will have to be 15,500 meters. It will consist of 727 hectares in area, and 180,000 square meters of warehouse facilities. The port upgrades itself, will cost $7 Bn out of the total $100 Bn to be spent on the project.

The Golden Desert Casino and Entertainment District

The Golden Desert Casino and Entertainment District is the proposed tourist hotspot to be right near the beach at Zeralda. Several high-class resorts, casinos, nightclubs and restaurants will be constructed near the prime beachfront property to make Algerida a tourist destination for summer and spring breaking Europeans, and “big spenders.” The following casino resorts will be constructed:

• The Sands Algeria
• Arabian Nights
• Sultan of Spades
• Gran Algiers

The casinos will be run and managed by the Algerian Ministry of Tourism, the Golden Desert Casino and Entertainment District is the only place in Algeria where consumption of alcohol and prostitution is completely legal. The Ministry of Finance plans on making the Golden Desert Casino and Entertainment District the official “cash cow of Algeria” as the Las Vegas of the Muslim World. Arabs have money, why not gamble it?

Algerida Transportation

Algerida will need an extensively developed transportation system to service the new capital area. Algerida plans to implement a metro system to include subway and buses. Additionally, Algerida will be implementing high speed rail and cargo rails for end-to-end city travel. The Algerida metro will at the beginning primarily service Oran, Tiaret, and Algiers respectively and be built closer and closer to linking each other together in Chlef as the need for new residential developments expands into the area. Metro trains will be purchased from China, the latest model of trains being used on the Beijing Metro. The entire metro service (bus and subways) will use the “Sa’adi Card,” an all access card. The card can be loaded up at subway stations and will be swiped when getting on the subway through turnstiles and at the bus door, and swiped when getting off or exiting turnstiles. The Algerida Highspeed Rail will be utilized through purchased Chinese CRH2 trains that run at 380 km/hr. Several stations for high speed rail and cargo trains will be constructed at large population centers along the lines. It will take approximately an hour to travel from Oran to Algiers. The trains will stop for 5 minutes at stops between the line start and line end. Subway trains will arrive every 5 minutes. There will be a simple metal detector and bag scan at both the high speed rail stations and metro stations manned by Public Safety officers.

Nadir Sa’adi International Airport (IATA Code: NSA)

One of the most important additions to the city will be the Nadir Sa’adi International Airport, that will serve as the larger of two airports for this major city. The Nadir Sa’adi International Airport will house four terminals and two runways of 12,802 ft of grooved asphalt. The entrance to the airport will be at the center between four extending arms of departure gates, the cars will pass under a tunnel which the planes will cross above to transition around the airport and the cars will move in a circular fashion by moving counter-clockwise before exiting the opposite side. Nadir Sa’adi Intl. Airport will primarily serve as an international transition hub between the Americas and Africa, the Americas and Asia, Europe and Africa, and any branching point from Asia or Africa. When completed, the airport will be utilized by over 80 airlines, 185+ destinations, and over 84 countries. The airport will serve as the primary hub and base for Air Maghreb.

Presidential Palace and Fanfare

The Sa’adi Presidential Palace will be constructed in Tenes, pretty much directly between Algiers and Oran. It will be constructed to be one of the finest recreations of old Sultan-era architecture, and will cost $490 Mn to built. The grounds will feature the largest mosque in Algeria for the Algerian Government, a military barracks, firing range, a large outdoor infinity pool, a presidential gardens, a 85 meter tall statue of President Nadir Sa’adi, a 300 car garage, horse stables, Presidential House, Guest House, Presidential Bunker, a helicopter pad, private airfield, and much more. The property itself, considered one of the most choice places in Algeria to build property, has a view overlooking the Mediterannean. On Rue Tripoli Street, the Algerian Congress building will be constructed with the largest flagpole in the country just on the opposite side of the road, overlooking the Mediterannean. Behind the flag, a 85 meter tall statue in bronze of President Nadir Sa’adi will be erected. The road will be 12 lanes in total after expansion, and continue uninterrupted for a mile before a 400 meter obelisk called the “Monument to the Maghrabians” splits Rue Tripoli as a roundabout, connecting in many different directions to be the most signature route in the whole city. Where the Algerian Congress sits is called “Al Merkets Square” where the nation will hold its military parades, when complete. The Algerian Congress building will have a viewing platform where citizens can look out at the city when there is not a military parade, but will be a viewing platform for the Algerian government when completed. The Algerian Congress will be on the south side of the Rue Tripoli, with the National Flagpole just north on the opposite side of Rue Tripoli, further north behind the flag will be the bronze statue of President Nadir Sa’adi and one mile down Rue Tripoli to the west, the “Monument to the Maghrabians” could be seen splitting the road. On the edge of the financial district, the buildings would likely be covered in flags in banner form in the event of a military parade.