A Former Saudi Arabian top intelligence official has made sensational claims against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman calling him a ‘psychopath’ and a ‘killer’. During his exile in Canada, the former spymaster alleged that the crown prince dispatched a team of mercenaries to kill him. Saad Aljabri, a former top spy and interlocutor between Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services and Western governments, claims he was targeted after he fled the country following the crown prince’s 2017 power grab. Ajabri appeared on CBS News ’60 Minutes’ program.
A friend at the Middle East spy agency warned him that he could face the fate of Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was allegedly murdered by a Riyadh-linked death squad after visiting the consulate in Turkey in 2018. He was told to keep a distance from missions in Canada, he said on ’60 minutes’. ‘Don’t go to consulates. Don’t go to embassies’ was the warning he received. According to him, the team arrived in Canada in October 2018 but was turned away by customs officials when they lied and carried suspicious items.
The Canadian foreign ministry did not respond to AFP’s request for comment, and AFP was unable to independently verify Aljabri’s claims. Canadian officials told ’60 Minutes’ they were aware of foreign actors trying to threaten Canadians, describing the threats as ‘completely unacceptable’. Aljabri said the group comprised of members of the ‘Tiger Squad,’ a shadow team of paid killers set up by Prince Mohammed for ‘extrajudicial killings, rape, and torture,’ according to a legal complaint filed by the former spy.
In his view, the group is part of a pattern of despotic behavior by the crown prince, who was once considered a reformer but has ruthlessly purged opponents since becoming the heir-apparent. Aljabri also said two of his eight children had been detained by Saudi authorities after he fled the kingdom. ‘I am here to sound the alarm about a psychopath, killer, in the Middle East with infinite resources, who poses a threat to his people, to the Americans and to the planet,’ he said.
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