SAUDIS’ ‘ HITMAN’ AT No10
Bodyguard was in royal entourage for UK visit
FOUR men in the Saudi ‘hit squad’ suspected of killing journalist Jamal Khashoggi came to Britain in March.
They are believed to have been protecting Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman on his state visit. One of the bodyguards, named as Maher abdul aziz Mutreb, was seen emerging from a black car outside No10 at the start of the three-day tour.
The crown prince also met the Queen at Buckingham Palace and Theresa May – for a second time – at Chequers.
a lieutenant, a sergeant major and another agent from the 15- strong Istanbul operation were also in the ruler’s security detail, according to the news website Middle east eye.
They are alleged to have flown in from Riyadh on October 2 to murder Mr khashoggi, who was a critic of the crown prince and his government.
a recording allegedly reveals that the 59-year-old journalist screamed as he was chopped up while still alive inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
The Saudis deny any link to Mr khashoggi’s disappearance but the alleged involvement of the crown prince’s protection team will add to the
international pressure for answers. Mutreb, who is an intelligence officer and former London-based diplomat, is believed to have played a ‘ pivotal role’ in the Khashoggi case, a Turkish source told CNN yesterday. In other developments: Turkish prosecutors questioned 15 Saudi consulate employees;
Police extended their search to woodland on the outskirts of Istanbul amid claims Mr Khashoggi’s body may have been buried there;
Turkey’s foreign minister denied giving an audio recording of Mr Khashoggi’s final moments to American officials;
Jeremy Hunt warned of ‘consequences’ for Britain’s relationship with Saudi Arabia;
Ex-MI6 chief Sir John Sawers said the evidence suggested Mr Khashoggi was killed on the orders of people close to the crown prince. The Gulf royal, known as MbS, was greeted by the then foreign secretary Boris Johnson after he arrived in London in March.
As part of a three- day charm offensive, he was hosted by the Queen for a lunch and private audience at Buckingham Palace.
He also stopped at Theresa May’s countryside retreat Chequers, No 10, and had a dinner with Prince Charles and Prince William. It was not clear last night whether the four men entered the official buildings and palace with him, although it is likely they would have been with him at all times.
A photograph taken on the day the crown prince visited Theresa May appeared to show Mutreb out- side No 10. The Saudi royal used talks with the Prime Minister to lay plans for a £65billion trade and investment package, while also touching on the Yemen conflict.
The Saudi embassy in London declined to comment or verify the photograph.
The Foreign Office said it was a matter for the Saudis to disclose details of those who were on the visit. Middle East Eye identified the other three Saudis as First Lieutenant Dhaar Ghalib Dhaar Al-Harbi, Sergeant Major Walid Abdullah Al-Shihri, and Abdul Aziz Muhammad Musa Al-Hawawi.
Al-Harbi was promoted by the crown prince from a sergeant to a lieutenant in the Saudi military in October 2017. This followed his involvement in staving off an attack on the Peace Palace in Jeddah.
Al- Shihri was identified as a former Saudi air force officer and was said to be in a video on YouTube reading a poem to a gathering of military officials in 2012.
A document from the Saudi interior ministry seen by Middle East Eye listed him as a member of the crown’s prince special security force. A French professional who worked with the Saudi royal family
identified Al-Hawawi as a member of the security team that travels with the crown prince.
CCTV footage emerged last week of the 15-man team arriving in two private jets at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport on the same day Mr Khashoggi went missing.
They were spotted checking into two four-star hotels in the city.
Separate surveillance footage showed Mutreb walking into the consulate and later walking outside the consul-general’s residence.
He was understood to be part of the crown prince’s security detail and was the first secretary at the Saudi embassy in London a decade ago. A source told CNN: ‘He was seconded to an elite protection brigade within the royal guard to serve as the personal security force of the crown prince.’
Mutreb was posted to London in 2007, according to a UK roster of foreign diplomatic staff. Footage apparently shows him walking past police barricades at the Istanbul consulate at 9.55am local time with several men trailing behind him.
Mr Khashoggi arrived a few hours later with marriage documents. His fiancée waited outside for him.
Mutreb was in Prince Mohammed’s entourage when he visited the United States in April to see rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Harvey.
Seven of the 15 men were allegedly high-ranking members of the crown prince’s close protection team, according to Middle East Eye.
At least two of them accompanied the crown prince to France in April, including Mutreb and Colonel Badr Lafi Muhammad Al-Otaibi.
Al- Otaibi was alleged to have been in the room when Mr Khashoggi was interrogated, according to local reports. Sir John Sawers told the BBC: ‘All the evidence points to it being ordered and carried out by people close to Mohammad bin Salman.
‘I don’t think he would have done this if he hadn’t thought he had licence from the US administration to frankly behave as he wished to do so.
‘I think President Trump and his ministerial team are waking up to just how dangerous it is to have people acting with a sense that they have impunity in their relationship with United States.’
In a development yesterday, Turkish television said as many as 15 employees were being questioned from the Istanbul consulate.
The station said they included the consul’s driver, technicians, accountants and telephone operators.
WHEN Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman came to power in Saudi Arabia, billed as a liberal reformer, the West had high hopes he would drag the barbaric desert kingdom into the 21st century.
Those hopes have been all but shattered by overwhelming evidence that Jamal Khashoggi, the prominent journalist and critic of Saudi offences against human rights, was tortured, dismembered and murdered at the regime’s behest.
Yesterday, the prince’s protestations of ignorance wore ever thinner, as it emerged that up to four members of the suspected hit-squad were in his entourage this year when he visited 10 Downing Street, Chequers and Buckingham Palace.
This paper is realistic enough to accept that many thousands of British jobs – and contracts worth billions of pounds – depend on our trade with the oil-rich kingdom.
We acknowledge, too, that Saudi Arabia has given us valuable intelligence about terrorists, while the fall of the House of Saud would destabilise the volatile Middle East in ways that defy imagining.
Indeed, it is a painful fact of realpolitik that if we were to choose our allies purely according to their respect for human rights, we would have few friends outside the West.
But if the evidence is borne out, Khashoggi’s murder was a crime so repulsive that it cannot pass unavenged.
After the Salisbury poisonings, Britain led a hugely successful diplomatic offensive against Vladimir Putin, in which all our major allies took part.
Given the crown prince’s seeming affront to British hospitality when he led a number of suspected killers into the heart of our national life, the Foreign Office must coordinate a similar campaign against him.
He must be taught that paying lip-service to reform is not enough.