Saudi Arabia number 1?

byHabib Battah
Dec 7, 2014

I’ve seen this Ferrari before. It is always parked in front of the plastic surgery clinic of Dr. Nader Saab, as indicated in the Arabic lettering on the window behind it.

But this is no ordinary quarter of a million dollar sports car. Have a closer look and you’ll notice that the license plate is not even Lebanese, it is Saudi Arabian as indicated by the “KSA” on the right corner. The plate number is “1”

So why does a Lebanese plastic surgeon have the seemingly most important license plate number in Saudi Arabia? Suggestions welcome!

According to his website, Saab’s clinic is “the first and only private esthetic surgery clinic in the world” offering “full service 5-star luxury in catering to the esthetic desires of its clientele.”

Habib Battah

Habib Battah is an investigative journalist and founder of the news site beirutreport.com. Battah has covered Lebanon and the Middle East for over 15 years and teaches journalism and media studies at the American University of Beirut. He is a contributor to Monocle, The Guardian, BBC World, Al Jazeera and others, a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and two-time recipient of the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award. Battah's investigative work was recently recognized for outstanding local reporting by the Columbia University Oakes Award for Environmental Reporting. Battah earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Near East Studies and Journalism from New York University.

2 comments

naim says:

Jan 24, 2015 at 5:48 am

The letters are included in the number plate
which makes this car number : GKN1 and not”1″
wikipedia:” The plates consist of three letters and up to four numbers”

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Liaqat Khan says:

Nov 27, 2018 at 12:19 am

We see a lot of 1 number of saodi aribaia number plates like ezg 1.

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