Beirut: A former top Saudi intelligence official publicly accused Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Thursday of sending a team of agents to Canada to kill him.
The allegation came in a lawsuit filed in US federal court Thursday by the former official, Saad Aljabri, who has accused the crown prince of seeking to silence or kill him to stop him from undermining the prince's relationship with the United States and the Trump administration.
The suit marks the first time a former senior Saudi official has publicly accused Mohammed, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, of carrying out a widespread and sometimes violent campaign to silence critical voices.
Aljabri, who was a top aide in the Saudi interior ministry, now lives in self-imposed exile near Toronto. Mohammed has tried to coax him to return to Saudi Arabia and in March, Saudi Arabia detained two of Aljabri’s adult children and his brother, prompting accusations by relatives and United States officials that they were being held hostage to secure Aljabri’s return.
His lawsuit says that Saudi agents attempted to target Aljabri in Canada less than two weeks after another team of Saudi operatives killed and dismembered dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. US intelligence agencies have determined that the crown prince likely ordered the killing.
Aljabri’s suit contained scant evidence to support its charges, including about the alleged Canada operation, nor could they be independently verified by The New York Times.
A spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment, and Mohammed has said that he had no prior knowledge of the operation targeting Khashoggi.
The lawsuit is the latest riposte in a years-long battle at the top of the Saudi power structure as the crown prince has worked to consolidate his grip on the kingdom.
Aljabri worked for years as a top aide to former crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who headed the Saudi interior ministry, which oversees domestic security and counter-terrorism. That work that gave Aljabri close relationships with intelligence officials from the United States and other countries.
Aljabri was fired by royal decree in 2015, before the present crown prince ousted Mohammed bin Nayef as crown prince and put himself next in line to the throne. Aljabri left Saudi Arabia two years later.
Aljabri has accused Mohammed of using increasingly aggressive tactics to try to return him to the kingdom, including offering him a job, threatening to have him extradited on corruption charges, and arresting two of his adult children to be used as leverage.
In 2017, Saudi Arabia filed a notice through Interpol, the international police organisation, asking other nations to arrest and extradite Aljabri to Saudi Arabia on corruption charges. Interpol later deemed that notice politically motivated, a violation of the organisation’s rules, and removed Aljabri’s name from its system, according to Interpol documents reviewed by The Times.
Aljabri’s suit adds a number of new allegations, accusing Mohammed of deploying Saudi agents in the United States to determine his whereabouts and sending the team of agents to Canada.
The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia under the Torture Victims Protection Act and the Alien Tort Statute, which allow non-Americans to sue in US courts for certain crimes committed abroad.
Aljabri could not be reached for comment. In an interview, his son, Dr Khalid Aljabri, a cardiologist also based in Canada, said his family chose to file the suit after running out of other options to secure the release of their relatives detained in the kingdom and resolve the conflict with the crown prince.
“We have exhausted every single avenue for a peaceful remedy and reconciliation, to no avail,” Khalid Aljabri said. “We hope that this will help end the torment that my family is suffering.”
A trial, he said, would allow both sides to present their cases.
“We have always told the Saudis, if you have an issue, bring it to court, so now we are making it easier for them by coming to court,” Khalid Aljabri said.
Citing unnamed Saudi officials, The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Saad Aljabri had been involved in large-scale corruption schemes to enrich himself and others, charges that were repeated by State-controlled Saudi media. Saudi officials have not responded to questions from The Times about corruption charges against Aljabri.
The court filing contains text messages that Aljabri says were sent to him by Mohammed. In September 2017, the crown prince asked him, “where should we dispatch the airplane to fetch you?”
Soon after, according to the lawsuit, Mohammed threatened to use “all available means” to reach Aljabri, including “measures that would be harmful to you.”
The suit also accuses Mohammed of creating a 50-man “death squad” known as the Tiger Team to go after Saudis at home and abroad whom he perceived to be a threat to his standing.
Last year, The Times reported that the Crown Prince, during the year before Khashoggi’s killing, had authorised a secret campaign to silence dissenters that included the surveillance, kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudi citizens at home and abroad. The report was based on interviews with US officials familiar with classified intelligence assessments about the efforts by the Saudi leader.
The suit alleges that a team of Saudi agents carrying forensic gear and including forensic experts arrived at an airport in Ontario in October 2018. They tried to enter on Canadian tourist visas but were turned away by Canadian border officials, the suit said.
Canadian officials have not spoken publicly about any such event.
Ben Hubbard and Mark Mazzetti c.2020 The New York Times Company
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