Ex-Saudi spy accuses crown prince of trying to assassinate him

A former senior Saudi intelligence official said in a US lawsuit Thursday that the country's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman tried to have him assassinated in 2018, just weeks after dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Turkey.

Saad Aljabri said Prince Mohammed sent a "hit squad" to Canada, where he lives in exile, to kill and dismember him in the same way that Khashoggi was murdered allegedly by the prince's agents in Istanbul in October 2018.

"To fulfil his murderous desire, Defendant bin Salman has personally orchestrated an attempted extrajudicial killing of Dr. Saad, an attempt that remains ongoing to this day," Aljabri charged in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington.

Aljabri said that Prince Mohammed wants him dead because he is close to rival prince and former Saudi security chief Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, and because he has intimate knowledge of Prince Mohammed's activities that would sour the close relationship between Washington and Riyadh.  

"Dr. Saad is uniquely positioned to existentially threaten Defendant bin Salman's standing with the US government. That is why Defendant bin Salman wants him dead," the suit said.

Aljabri was already abroad in June 2017 when Prince Mohammed seized power in the palace, removing Mohammed bin Nayef as crown prince and placing him under house arrest.

After his children in Riyadh were hit with travel restrictions, Aljabri refused entreaties to return, fearing he would meet the same fate as Prince Nayef, and moved to Canada where a son lives.

Since then Riyadh tried unsuccessfully to use Interpol to gain custody of him. And he says they sent a team of agents to the United States to track him down.

Thirteen days after Khashoggi's murder on 2 October 2018, a team from what Aljabri called in the lawsuit Prince Mohammed's "personal mercenary group, the Tiger Squad," arrived in Canada.

The team, he claimed, included forensic specialists and equipment similar to the group that dismembered Khashoggi's body, which was never found.

He said Canadian security became suspicious and disrupted the plot, but that efforts to kill him continue, and that Prince Mohammed obtained a religious fatwa, or command, for his death from clerics. 

In March his two children in Saudi Arabia were taken away and haven't been heard from.

The suit against Prince Mohammed plus 12 named and another 11 unidentified people was filed as a claim of attempted extrajudicial killing under the Torture Victim Protection Act.

Aljabri asked the court for unspecified damages  for "severe emotional distress," anxiety and hypertension, and other ailments, and punitive damages against the defendants as well.

He also asked the court to declare that the defendants violated the "law of nations" under the Alien Tort Statute.

"This court can begin the process of holding defendant bin Salman and his agents accountable for their actions," the suit said.

Contacted by AFP, the Saudi Embassy in Washington indicated it did not have a comment on the suit at the moment.