University Of New Haven’s Saudi Ties Face Scrutiny

A journalist’s death, allegedly at the hands of Saudi government operatives, has brought new scrutiny to ties between the University of New Haven and an institution in Riyadh that trains security forces for Saudi Arabia.

Stanley Heller, a New Haven activist with the Middle East Crisis Committee, has demanded UNH end its partnership with the King Fahd Security College in Riyadh, a school the Connecticut university

called the Saudis’ “premier training institution for security studies” when it signed a cooperation agreement in 2016.

Heller said it was nothing short of a scandal “that the University of New Haven has relations with a police college in a country known for human rights abuse, known for torturing and killing dissidents.”

Lyn Chamberlin, a university spokeswoman and its vice president of marketing and communications, declined to answer a list of questions Monday, including how much the university is being paid for its advisory role. King Fahd Security College is run by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Interior.

Experts from UNH’s forensic institute — the Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Science, named for the celebrity forensic scientist and professor at the university — have been advising the Saudi college as it transitions to offering four-year degrees. In 2016, president Steven H. Kaplan said he was excited to put his school’s expertise in criminal justice, national security and forensic science “at the service of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s next generation of security professionals.”

“What can you do? We do training for police departments everywhere in the world,” Lee said in a telephone interview. “Singapore, Poland, China, Taiwan — everybody.”

To hear Lee tell it, the university was “improving the justice system” of Saudi Arabia by helping shape its security curriculum. “We don’t teach them torture or kidnapping,” he said, adding that the curriculum contains “nothing about interrogation at all.”

The Saudi government admitted Saturday that Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist who wrote columns critical of the Saudi monarchy for The Washington Post, died inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. The admission came after several weeks of denials, with Saudi officials insisting Khashoggi left the consulate alive and of his own will. The Saudis’ explanation that Khashoggi died during a fistfight with interrogators was met with incredulity by Turkish officials, who say he was executed by a hit squad linked to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Heller has criticized the Saudi government for years, particularly its involvement in the Yemeni civil war. Still, the killing of a prominent U.S. resident journalist outside the kingdom was unexpected, he said. “Even for them, it was brazen and horrific to murder someone inside a consulate on foreign soil.”

Heller noted that Salah Muhammed al-Tubaigy, a forensics expert listed as a board member of the Saudi Society of Forensic Medicine, which is based at King Fahd Security College, has been identified by Turkish and U.S. media as an autopsy specialist said to have dismembered Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate.

On Saturday, a spokeswoman for the University of New Haven dismissed any connection between the man accused of dismembering Khashoggi with a bone saw and the board member of the forensic society, telling The New Haven Register it was a case of mistaken identity.

The Register reporter noted that a Google translation of the Arabic name on the forensic society’s website yielded a “Salah Mohammed Al-Tabaiqi,” a different spelling of the “Salah Muhammed al-Tubaigy” named by Turkish officials as the person who dismembered Khashoggi. And Chamberlin, the university spokeswoman, told The Register on Saturday that the board member is “not the same person as the Dr. Salah Muhammed al-Tubaigy who has been in the news.”

But a Google search of the board member’s name in the original Arabic produces scores of news articles linking him to the Khashoggi case. And on a list of editorial members of the Saudi Journal of Forensic Medicine and Sciences, which gives King Fahd Security College as its mailing address, are a “Dr. Salah Tubaigy,” described as an official for the Saudi Ministry of Interior, and Henry Lee.

The director of the forensic journal did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Lee said he did not recognize the Saudi autopsy expert’s name, but could not say for certain they had never met. They may have bumped into each other at an international conference for forensic scientists, Lee speculated.

Lee said he went to Saudi Arabia “a couple times” in 2017, along with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, to advise law enforcement officials on forensic techniques. As for belonging to a scientific journal linked to al-Tubaigy, Lee said he has been published in scores of journals and knows virtually none of the other contributors.

In 2017, Heller sent a letter to the university, warning that offering forensic expertise to the Saudi security apparatus would “help it commit grave violations to persons’ basic rights and well-being.”

“We warned them about this,” Heller said. “And they said nothing.”