Saudi crown prince upends traditions in purge of rivals
LONDON — A midnight blitz of arrests ordered by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia over the weekend has ensnared dozens of its most influential figures, including 11 of his royal cousins, in what by Sunday appeared to be the most sweeping transformation in the kingdom’s governance for eight decades.
The arrests, ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman without formal charges or legal process, were presented as a crackdown on corruption. They caught both the kingdom’s richest investor, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, and the most potent remaining rival to the crown prince’s power: Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, a favored son of the late King Abdullah.
Mutaib bin Abdullah had been removed from his post as chief of a major security service just hours before the arrests announced late Saturday.
All members of the royal family were barred from leaving the country, U.S. officials tracking the developments said Sunday.
With the new detentions, Mohammed bin Salman, King Salman’s favored son and key adviser, now appears to have established control over all three Saudi security services — the military, internal security services and national guard. For decades they had been distributed among branches of the House of Saud clan to preserve a balance of power in the Middle East’s biggest oil producer and an important U.S. ally.
In the same stroke, the crown prince has cowed businessmen and royals across the kingdom by taking down the undisputed giant of Saudi finance. And during the last several weeks he has ordered enough high-profile arrests of intellectuals and clerics to frighten the remainder of the academic and religious establishment into acceding to his will as well.
“It is the coup de grâce of the old system,” said Chas Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador. “Gone. All power has now been concentrated in the hands of Mohammad bin Salman.”
Why the crown prince acted now — whether to eliminate future opposition or perhaps to crush some threat he saw brewing — was not immediately clear.
At 32 years old, he had little experience in government before his father, King Salman, 81, ascended to the throne in 2015, and the prince has demonstrated little patience for the previously staid pace of change in the kingdom.
He has led Saudi Arabia into a protracted military conflict in Yemen and a bitter feud with its Persian Gulf neighbor Qatar. He has taken on a business elite accustomed to state subsidies and profligacy by laying out radical plans to remake the Saudi economy, lessen its dependence on oil and rely instead on foreign investment. And he has squared off against conservatives in the religious establishment with symbolic steps to loosen strict moral codes, including a pending end to the ban on women driving.