royal family, Saudi Arabia's allies in the Gulf (Qatar, a rival, was considered fair game) and then Saudi Arabia's other Arab allies. Within such a hierarchy of red lines, the Egyptian regime can indeed pull rank and demand that Asharq al- Awsat silence a critic. However, she was the one who stepped down. Alhomayed responded to Eltahawy in both the English and Arabic version of Asharq Al Awsat. Eltahawy noted that in the majority of cases the writer was left to discover on their own that he or she was banned rather than receiving a reason or justification from Alhomayed. Alhomayed is believed to have banned several other writers including the managing director of Al Arabiya News Channel and former editor in chief of Asharq Al Awsat, Abdulrahman Al Rashed. However, Al Rashed's banning caused quite an international stir in mid-September 2010 and Alhomayed told AFP that the newspaper never banned him. Nothing official was reported about the matter until 16 September 2010 when the paper quoted Al Rashed saying that he voluntarily stopped writing for them. On 18 September 2010, Al Rashed returned to writing in Asharq Al Awsat. As of 2021, he remains a regular contributor. Alleged Saudi bias 2009-2012 Alhomayed's era witnessed some major Saudi-related stories being ignored or censored. For example, under Alhomayed Asharq Al Awsat completely ignored the 2011 story of the Saudi princess who was granted asylum in the UK after facing death threats in her country for giving birth to 'love-child' of a British citizen and the 2010 trial of Saudi prince Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who murdered his servant Bandar Abdulaziz in 2010. This was openly criticized by a member of the newspaper staff, Manal Lutfi Khalil, who spoke of how the Saudi paper intentionally ignored the story on BBC Arabic. Also under Alhomayed, Asharq Al Awsat ignored many sensitive stories relating to Saudi allies, such as the United Arab Emirates. For example, it didn't report on the scandal of Emirati Sheikh Issa bin Zayed, who was filmed torturing one of his workers. Another example of Alhomayed's perceived bias towards Saudi allies was shown when he joined other Arab newspaper columnists in labeling US President Barack Obama as the lead contributor for Syria's ongoing crisis for not accepting requests to take military action in Syria. Furthermore, Alhomayed was accused of having double standards for not reporting freely about his own country