Suleiman and his guests used the opportunity to jabber eagerly about the pleasure they had derived from the savage entertainment, The lesser nobles, eager to curry favor with the fabulously wealthy and powerful Suleiman bin Hamid, sought to outdo each other in their expressions of gratitude.

Suleiman held up his hand for silence. The response was instantaneous. All talk ceased.

"This time, I shall ask my brother, Sheik Mohamet al Adwa, to select not one---but two---women," he announced, inclining his head toward the fat ugly sheik who reclined on a mound of cushions a few feet to his right. "Will you do me the honor brother?" he asked the other man. "The honor is mine, brother," the fat sheik replied, licking his thick lips.

Sheiks Mohamet al Adwa and Suleiman bin Hamid were not really brothers---they were not even related. But Mohamet was the chief of a nearby tribe---and as he had done so many time before, Suleiman was using this as a means of serving notice on the other chiefs that Mohamet and his friends were allies.

Further conversation was prevented by the return of the eunuchs---who were driving seven naked young women into the domed structure that served as Suleiman's torture chamber. All the women were attractive---and some were beautiful. They were light-skinned---girls and women who had been born in the Western, not the Eastern World.

The sheik's guests commented audibly on the attributes of the women.

"Delightful, delightful," an ancient Bedouin cackled, his mouth moving over toothless gums, a trickle of saliva running down the corner of his grizzled chin.

"They are beauties, my brother," Sheik Mohamet murmured. "It shall be difficult to choose among them..."

Stark, terrible fear was etched on the faces of the seven women the eunuchs pushed and thrust across the floor to within a few yards where Suleiman reclined on his cushions. Manacled hand and foot with heavy chains, they nonetheless raised their hands to implore mercy or in a vain effort to cover their nudity.

"Make them take their hands away from their breasts and private parts!" Suleiman snarled.

The eunuchs sprang forward and struck viciously at the hands and arms of the offending females.

"Now you can see the full beauty of each and make your choice, my brother," Suleiman murmured to Sheik Mohamet. "They shall hide nothing from you!"

Mohamet studied the women carefully, draining every drop of sensual pleasure from the sight of their naked, voluptuous bodies and the thought that they would soon be slashed and lacerated by the eunuch's whips.

"Sometimes, I think the anticipation of seeing and hearing a woman in pain is almost as great as the sights and sounds themselves, my brother," he said to Suleiman, his voice harsh and heavy with the warped sexual sickness that possessed him.

Suleiman nodded dreamily. He, too, had often thought the same. But then, the peak, the pinnacle of pleasure was only reached when one saw and heard.

His guest continued to look at the women for several minutes. Suddenly, he spoke---and made his choice.

"That one!" He pointed at a slender blonde with still-budding breasts.

"And that one!" His fat stubby finger jabbed in the direction of a petite brunette with deep, full breasts and voluptuous thighs.

Suleiman nodded his approval.

"An excellent choice, my brother---but may I make a suggestion that might add to our pleasure? Let us have the reaming women kept within the room to witness the fate of their sisters. When their turn comes, their terror may make them scream the louder..."

A murmur of delighted assent swept through the guests. Their host signaled the eunuchs.

Two massive castrates stepped forward, seized the selected girls and chained them together on the marble column. The remaining women were herded to one side and thrust down to the floor.

"You may begin!" commanded Suleiman.

This time two whips, instead of one, hissed through the air as a pair of the Sheiks attendants wielded their vicious weapons. The hall was filled with the agonized shrieks of the hapless girls---two more pitiful victims of Sheik Suleiman's obscene, perverted sexual mania...

Sheik Suleiman bin Hamid holds the power of life and death over 50,000 subjects who inhabit his oil-rich sheikdom. The semi-autonomous state lies across the Jabal Shammar mountain range in Saudi Arabia, south of the city of Janf. It is a vast, mainly uncharted area of the Nafud Desert, an arid wasteland of sand and rock. What little vegetation there is only exists around infrequent oases and there no towns to speak of within the territory, other than small nomadic villages. Despite the barren appearance of his domain, Sheik Suleiman is wealthy as only a Middle Eastern oil-rich potentate can be. The deposits of "black gold" beneath the bare surface of his sheikdom are vast. Oil rigs cluster in many areas and even bigger, as yet untapped oil deposits are known to exist in several other sections.

The powerful sheik, whose sexual perversions and atrocities have maimed and even killed untold numbers of hapless girls and women, has a long history of unnatural cruelty. He inherited his sheikdom from his father in 1958, shortly after the huge oil deposits were discovered in the area. His first act as reigning potentate was to order his 41 brothers and half-brothers slaughtered - thus eliminating any possible rivals or threats of usurpation of his power.

Long a confirmed sadist, whose cruelties had made him feared and hated in the brothels and bordellos of the Middle East, Sheik Suleiman's vicious lusts increased markedly after he acquired power and wealth. The sadistic vistas of his warped brain expanded a thousand fold. In his febrile fantasies he envisioned himself wallowing in blood and shrieks of countless victims.

He had long despised Westerners, particularly Western women, many of whom had coldly rejected his advances when, in his youth, he attended universities in London and Paris. Now, his hatred and insatiable sadism turned against and concentrated on Western women - whose light skins and supple bodies he had always desired but seldom permitted to possess.

Suleiman's diseased brain formulated a plan.

The slave trade still flourishes in the Middle East, and Middle Eastern ports are hotbeds of business activity for slave-traders. These dealers in human misery and lives transport entire shiploads of male and female slaves to the Middle East from various ports in Africa and other sections of the world as well.

Sheik Suleiman wanted Western women for sex slaves and, dipping deep into his swollen coffers, he made the necessary arrangements with several of the criminals and thugs in the Middle Eastern slave-trade.

By late 1959, there were two battered coastal steamers plying the Mediterranean, Aegean, and Adriatic exclusively in Sheik Suleiman's service. Manned by the hardened veterans of the slave-trade, these ships cruised around the shorelines of Turkey, the Greek Islands and more remote sections of the Greek coast and the coastlines of southern Yugoslavia and southern Italy. Stopping at small ports or anchoring offshore, the slave-traders went about the business of procuring women for Suleiman with grim, methodical efficiency.

Going ashore the slavers headed for the poor sections of the seamy Levantine towns or into the poverty stricken farm areas. They offered girls and young women 'work contracts'---making glowing promises of fine jobs as domestics, cooks, and so on.

"We represent wealthy families in the Middle Eastern countries", the slavers told their dupes. To make their promises more tempting---and convincing---they would offer immediate cash advances of up to $50 to the family of any girl who would sign a one year 'work contract'.

Among the poverty-ridden, ignorant people on whom the slavers preyed, the promises sounded great and the cash-on-the-line payment seemed like a fortune. Suleiman's procurers signed many women to their spurious 'work contracts' and took them aboard their rusty ships where the women suddenly found themselves prisoners.

When bribes and blandishments failed to have their desired effect, the slavers were not reluctant to resort to out-and-out kidnapping. Several young women who had turned down the proffered 'work contracts' simply disappeared from the fields in which they worked or from the dark streets of the villages and towns in which they lived.

However they came aboard the slave-ships there was no way for the women to escape once they set foot on the grimy decks of the vessels. The cargo holds were prisons---and the slave-women were released from them only when the battered tubs finally returned to a Saudi Arabian port. No one knows precisely how many Western girls and women have been duped or kidnapped and then handed over to Sheik Suleiman bin Hamid. Lieutenant Colonel C.A.R. Woodruff, until his recent retirement, a British Government agent in the Nafud Desert area, has hazarded a guess.

"My information, which I deem fairly accurate, indicated that no less than 350 white slave women are brought into Suleiman's domain each year," Woodruff says.

If this estimate is correct, the total since Suleiman's slavers first began procuring women for him would be over 1,000. It seems highly probable that the estimate is an accurate one, for Suleiman is known to have made gifts of white slaves to neighboring sheiks, and his own compounds are generally filled to capacity with captive females.

The hapless women the sadistic sheik keeps, for the purposes of satisfying his vicious lusts, are held in a heavily guarded compound constructed specifically for that purpose. There are several thick-walled barracks in which they live, eat and sleep---and wait with terror for the summons to appear in the whipping-hall.

The whipping-hall itself is an impressive pleasure dome---a large structure with high, vaulted ceilings built of white granite brought from the Jabal Shammar quarries.

"The granite was quarried by Suleiman's male slaves and brought down to his tribal lands by oil company trucks," Lt Colonel C.A.R. Woodruff charges.

Officials of the oil company holding the concession to drill on Suleiman's lands deny all knowledge of the mad sheik's slaves or his sexual perversions. Their dealings with him, the oil men insist, are solely concerned with oil. It is impossible to determine whether this is true or not. The company operating in Suleiman's domain is not one of the large, legitimate oil companies. It is, rather, a somewhat mysterious consortium formed by shady companies and individuals operating out of Tangier.

In any event. the slave-compound and whipping palace are all heavily guarded. The entire area is surrounded by a nine-foot-high, triple-apron barbed wire fence. The fence is patrolled constantly---on the inside by giant ebony-skinned eunuchs, on the outside, by Suleiman's fierce desert fighters, all of whom are armed to the teeth.

The interior of the whipping-hall---which Suleiman prefers to call his 'Palace of Pain'---is luxuriously furnished in the fashion and manner preferred by most rich Arabs. Great mounds of silken cushions and thick, priceless Oriental rugs provide comfortable resting-places for those who come to watch the savage tortures of the sex-slaves.

The girls are tied or chained to marble columns. Various forms of torture are used, but Sheik Suleiman appears to prefer watching while the women are whipped. He has a fantastic collections consisting of hundreds of all known varieties.

The whips run the gamut form short quirts to huge bull-whips, cat-o'-nine tails and multi-stranded knouts made of elephant and rhinoceroses hide. a vast array of chabouks and kurbashi and lashes made of metal-wire strands round out the hideous collection. But even these instruments designed to split and slash skin and flesh and crack and crush bone are not enough for the sadistic Suleiman. Casks of brine and even acid stand near the endless racks of whips. The whips are frequently soaked in the salt water or corrosive liquid just before using on the women. The salt and acid burn and irritate the open wounds left by the rawhide---and cause even greater pain to the victims.

During the whipping sessions, Suleiman and his guests sip tea and consume liberal quantities of aphrodisiacs. Bhang, hashish, belladonna, camphor and even more powerful and exotic sexual stimulants are regularly shipped to the sheikdom from the various Saudi cities where these are sold as openly as aspirin.

"We supply large quantities of various drugs and compounds which act as rejuvenators to Sheik Suleiman," one well-known Saudi drug importer and dealer admits. "The trade is an entirely legal one in Saudi Arabia---and we ask no questions."

The torture-sessions take on characteristics of orgies as the sheik and his friends work themselves into wild frenzies while the women are being whipped and otherwise abused.

The whippings are always carried out by the darkest-skinned of Suleiman's castrates. This is undoubtedly an outgrowth of his hatred for fair-skinned Western women. He derives added satisfaction from the thought that he is not only causing the women excruciating pain through torture, but that they feel 'degraded' by having the torture inflicted upon them by blacks.

The eunuchs, incidentally, are also supplied by the captains of the slave ships. They are purchased from slave-traders who still operate in North and East Africa, swooping down on remote native villages and rounding up men and women whom they transport to coastal towns and then sell to Middle Eastern slave-merchants.

The male slaves are sold on the slave-blocks at Riyadh and other Saudi Arabian cities. They are castrated by their new owners upon arrival at their final destinations.

These poor wretches are aware that their only hope for survival is to obey the orders given them without question. Hence they carry out their instructions with extreme efficiency. In the case of the eunuchs owned by Sheik Suleiman they know that they dare not refuse to obey his commands to whip the Western women---even unto whipping them to death. Suleiman's bodyguards and henchmen will not hesitate to gun down any eunuch who rebels or falters.

"We sometimes have to shoot a eunuch---as an example," one of the sheik's lieutenants recently admitted. "When we do, the dead castrate's body is hung near the eunuch's living quarters and allowed to rot in the sun. The lesson is not lost."

Sometimes the miserable female sex-slaves are broken on a medieval torture rack. At other times, they are not bound at all, but whipped around the room. Suleiman and his friends derive vast enjoyment from the sight---roaring appreciatively as the girls dash desperately from one side of the hall to the another in an effort to escape the slashing whips. They never escape---and eventually their bleeding bodies collapse on the floor.

One aspect of the torture-sessions never varies. The girls are never gagged. Their shrieks and screams add to the excitement and zest of the spectacle and bring even greater pleasure to the sadists who congregate in the 'Palace of Pain.'

There are, however, other variations on the themes of Suleiman's torture-librettos. On occasion selected sex-slaves are told that they will be given their freedom if they will whip other girls. Few refuse to do so, for all have a frantic desire to extricate themselves from their predicament. They are willing to do anything in hopes of being released.

The sheik's promises are never kept, however. Instead of freeing those women who agree to torture their fellow slaves, Suleiman either has them whipped in turn by the most barbarous of the eunuchs, or he turns them over to their former victims. The fury of the vengeance wreaked by the previously beaten women can be imagined.

It is not possible to determine how many girls and women have died from the tortures and atrocities that take place regularly inside Suleiman's domed 'Palace of Pain.' But there can be no question that there have been many.

Ahmet al Walila, one of Suleiman's trusted lieutenants, made a visit to Aleppo, Syria, not long ago. There he was a frequent patron of the notorious brothel know as "Solomon's Temple." During one hashish-spiced revel, Ahmet al Walila openly boasted about the inhuman orgies in which he had participated as a member of Sheik Suleiman's retinue.

"Only a few weeks ago, four women died at one spectacle," he delightedly told some West German newsmen who were patrons at the brothel. "Sheik Suleiman had just received a shipment of marvelous new whips---and he ordered his eunuchs to prove their efficiency. It was wonderful! I have never seen such suffering as that endured by the women before they finally died..."

The "marvelous new whips" had come from India. They were djarki---fifteen-foot-long scourges with wire tips. Ahmet al Walila went on to enthusiastically declare that the wire tips proved "most effective" in ripping the bodies and faces of the victims on whom they were used.

None of the sex-slaves were connected in any way with Suleiman's official harem. Under Mohammedan law, he is allowed a total of four official wives at any given time. He can, however, divorce as often as he desires, merely by saying "I renounce thee" three times in a wife's presence. That done, he can marry again, and repeat the process as frequently as he may wish.

Suleiman has had a total of 57 wives. The wives occupy the sprawling harem building---as do 50 official concubines and a reputed 128 children born him by the various women.

Wives and concubines are treated with only the usual brutality. They are beaten as punishment, or when Suleiman feels this is necessary to enforce discipline in the harem. The are not, however, whipped or tortured in the 'Palace of Pain'.

Suleiman's sexual proclivities manifested themselves at an early age. He is said to have beaten and raped a half-sister when he was thirteen years old and she was only ten. Other incidents in his teens and early twenties proved him an avid and confirmed sadist. There were several incidences---hushed up through diplomatic intervention---during the periods that he attended universities in London and Paris.

Although he is fabulously wealth, Suleiman is still a shrewd trader. He tires quickly of sex-slaves who survive repeated whippings and tortures. These broken women are sold back into the white-slave trade.

For example, in March, 1962, Mohnandas Poonikar, a Hindu white-slaver notorious as one of the most successful vice-lords of Asia, bought a 'shipment' of 110 'Used' girls from Sheik Suleiman. The women mostly Greek, Turkish, Yugoslav, and Italian---were promptly swallowed up by the slum brothels Poonikar controls in such cities Karachi, Hyderabad, and Bombay.

Bordellos in Aleppo, Damascus, Beirut, Port Said, and Jeddah have also been supplied with the sadistic sheik's castoffs---at a price. Western women being a much-sought-after rarity in Middle Eastern brothels, the sheik's discards fetch a good price even though they are scarred frequently, even mutilated by the time he is ready to sell them.

No one has attempted to stop Suleiman. No one really can. He holds virtually absolute power over the area of his tribal domain. There is no law against slavery in Saudi Arabia---in fact, almost every sheik has numbers of slaves, both male and female.

Interpol has a monumental dossier on Suleiman and the activities of his hired procurers. But Interpol has no authority to take any action. It is purely an information-gathering investigative agency. It can only gather data and evidence and turn it over to police agencies of the countries concerned. If those agencies are unable---or unwilling---to take further steps, there is nothing more that Interpol can do.

The law enforcement authorities of Mediterranean countries have issued countless warnings to people living in out-of-the-way villages and rural areas. They have tried to explain the grave danger the girls face by signing work-contracts or having any dealings with so-called 'labor recruiters' who do not have proper credentials.

But there are many poor, uneducated people who neither heed or even understand the warnings. The promises of work---and the sight of actual money---are irresistible lures. Girls who have long lived on a bare subsistence level are likely to forget warnings when promised good pay, good clothes, travel and adventure.

Thus they continue to fall into the trap and sign 'work-contracts' and accompany the so-called 'labor recruiters' who are really vicious slave-traders aboard their hell ships. Within days---or weeks--- they arrive in Saudi Arabia, and their suffering begins.