Exiled Saudi official levels new claims against prince,
Ex-intel official claims presence of ‘Tiger Squad’ assassins in Canada
A former Saudi official now living in Canada has levelled new allegations against the crown prince he says tried to have him killed, painting a picture of repeated and ongoing efforts to hunt down the exiled official and his family.
It’s the latest development in a legal battle that has pulled back the curtain on what appears to be a raging feud between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and former intelligence official Saad Aljabri, who now lives in Toronto.
Their fight came to light last summer with Aljabri’s stunning lawsuit allegation that the crown prince had sent hit men to Canada in 2018 in a botched effort to kill him.
This week, in an amended complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., Aljabri went further.
He alleges that after one group of would-be assassins — a socalled Tiger Squad — failed to clear customs, a second group of unknown size did make it into this country.
Aljabri claims that Saudi officials have not just been hunting him, but his family.
He now alleges that an attempt was made in 2018 to lure his daughter to the same Saudi consulate in Istanbul where, just days later, Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi would be killed in a slaying that made headlines around the world.
“If the allegations in this Complaint seem fantastical, that is only because it is difficult to fathom the depths of depravity of Defendant bin Salman and the men he empowered to carry out his will,” the amended complaint states.
Aljabri faces accusations as well. A suit from Saudi companies alleged last month that he had embezzled billions of dollars from them, and his assets have been frozen.
None of the accusations — made by or against Aljabri — has been tested in court. Lawyers for the crown prince have previously said in court filings that bin Salman is immune from prosecution as a head of state and that Aljabri’s claims are without merit and an attempt to divert attention from “massive theft.”
Aljabri alleges that agents of bin Salman sought to lure his daughter, Hissah Almuzaini, to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where she was living, in September 2018.
It is alleged that one of bin Salman’s aides tried to pressure Almuzaini’s husband, Salem Almuzaini, who was in Saudi Arabia, to get her to renew her passport and return to the kingdom.
Even when Salem declared that his wife did not want to return to Saudi Arabia, the aide — in an insistent manner that was “puzzling” — continued to say she should attend the consulate in Istanbul to fix her papers.
“Fortunately for Hissah, she never went to the consulate,” the amended complaint states. “After Jamal Khashoggi entered the very same consulate days later, Hissah learned the fate awaiting her if she had obeyed (the aide’s) demands.”
The crown prince has denied he ordered the killing of Khashoggi.
Salem Almuzaini, meanwhile, hasn’t been heard from since Aljabri’s original lawsuit was filed last August, the amended complaint states.
Aljabri has previously alleged that in October 2018, the crown prince dispatched a team of Saudi nationals to Canada to kill Aljabri, but that the mission was thwarted soon after their arrival in Canada. The amended complaint clarifies that one group of would-be assassins landed at Ottawa International Airport and failed to clear customs, but other members of the squad arrived the next day in Montreal.
“Unlike the team that arrived in Ottawa, these Tiger Squad members successfully entered Canada.”
Their exact numbers are not known, the amended complaint says.
It has been previously alleged that the attempted “extrajudicial killing” was part of a broad campaign by the crown prince to silence Aljabri because of his close ties with Western security officials and the confidential information Aljabri holds about bin Salman.
Aljabri has also previously claimed that bin Salman sought to “lure” him out of hiding, including by ordering the abduction of two of Aljabri’s other adult children, Sarah and Omar, in Saudi Arabia in March 2020.
The amended complaint this week now also alleges that the crown prince convened a meeting in May 2020 during which he directed agents to pursue another mission to kill Aljabri — this time by travelling to the United States and then entering Canada by land.
The amended complaint says bin Salman’s agents “have pursued intensified efforts to locate (Aljabri), identify his patterns of movement, and collect information on his physical security arrangements” and that in recent months, he’s faced “repeated credible threats on his life” and that police deployed an emergency response team at one point outside his home to a potential imminent threat.
It alleges that bin Salman’s agents directed a Saudi national studying in Ottawa last June to try to pinpoint the location of Aljabri and approached a private intelligence consultant to locate his whereabouts. As recently as December, those agents sought information about Aljabri’s physical security arrangements through an employee of a commercial cybersecurity company, the document states.
The amended complaint goes on to say that bin Salman assembled loyal operatives to create his own team of hit men — the “Tiger Squad” — several years ago, after Aljabri, then still working for the government, refused a request by bin Salman, then deputy crown prince, to use government resources to kidnap, torture and kill a Saudi prince in France who had criticized bin Salman on Twitter for wasting the royal family’s money on a $500-million yacht.
“In short, when Defendant bin Salman’s ability to kill was hamstrung by the official organs of the Kingdom, he created a personal team prepared to do anything and everything for him, anywhere in the world,” the amended complaint states.
According to the complaint, that team subsequently captured the prince and flew him back to Saudi Arabia, where he was tortured.
In a separate lawsuit filed in Ontario Superior Court last month, 10 Saudi state-owned companies allege Aljabri leveraged his high-ranking government position to conspire with others to create a group of companies “under the guise of purporting to carry out counterterrorism activities” and then redirected billions in state funds for himself and others.
Aljabri has denied the embezzlement allegations.