بن سلمان في فتيل هل هي لعنة المنشار

Quote: Saudi Crown Prince sent hit squad to Canada, exiled spy chief alleges Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince dispatched a hit squad to Toronto in an attempt to murder a former high-ranking intelligence officer, an effort made shortly after the assassination of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, according to allegations contained in court documents filed in Washington. The target was Saad Aljabri, 61, who held a senior intelligence post under deposed crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef. He has been keeping a low profile and under private security protection in Toronto since 2017. Mr. Aljabri alleges in newly filed court documents that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman tracked him in both the United States, where he owns property, and later in Canada because he possessed “damning information,” including recordings he has made in case he is one day killed. The filings do not explain how Mr. Aljabri obtained the information on which his allegations are based. “On or around October 15, 2018 – less than two weeks after the extrajudicial killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi ... another team of Saudi nationals traveled across the Atlantic Ocean from Saudi Arabia to Canada, where Dr. Saad lives in exile, with the intention of killing Dr. Saad,” the court documents allege. Mr. Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post, was an outspoken critic of Crown Prince bin Salman, the de facto leader of the oil-rich kingdom who’s known by the initials MBS. Mr. Khashoggi was strangled and dismembered by a 15-member team of Saudi assassins on October 2, 2018, during a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Mr. Aljabri alleges the Crown Prince, “deployed a network of Saudi agents” in the U.S. to hunt him while he was living in Boston in 2017. When he fled the United States to Canada later that year, he says the Saudis dispatched an assassination team known as the Tiger Squad to Toronto. Members of the Tiger Squad, who are loyal to the Crown Prince, obtained Canadian tourist visas in May, 2018, five months before their trip, the documents say. They carried two bags of forensic tools and had personnel experienced in the cleanup of crime scenes – including one who worked in the same department as the man who dismembered Mr. Khashoggi with a bone saw. They were intercepted at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, where they tried to “avert the detection of Canadian border security by entering through separate kiosks.” According to the court filing, Canadian border agents “quickly became suspicious” of the arrivals and quizzed the Saudis, who are named in the documents. They denied knowing one another, but the CBSA found a photo of some of the men together and refused to let them into the country, except for one who was allowed to enter with a diplomatic passport. In the court filing, Mr. Aljabri accuses the Crown Prince of attempted extrajudicial killing in violation of the U.S. Torture Victim Protection Act and in breach of international law. Mr. Aljabri cites the United States’s Alien Tort Statute that protects foreign nationals from flagrant human-rights violations. One of the lawyers acting for Mr. Aljabri in the filing is David Pressman, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security who was once nominated by then-president Barack Obama to serve as ambassador for the United States at the United Nations Security Council. He has also previously served as director for war crimes and atrocities on the National Security Council at the White House. Mr. Aljabri said in the court filing that he believes the Crown Prince has not given up on killing him, noting a recent fatwa issued by Saudi religious leaders urging followers to murder him. “Following the failure of the October 2018 Tiger Squad plot in Canada, upon information and belief, Defendant bin Salman now plans to send agents directly through the United States to enter Canada by land and, once and for all eliminate Dr. Saad.” Saudi Arabia presses Canada to end refuge for Saad Aljabri, ex-intelligence officer Saudi family in Canada breaks silence as children seized in Riyadh Turkish prosecutors file indictment against 20 Saudi nationals over 2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi Mr. Aljabri, who the filings say has been granted permanent-resident status in Canada, managed to get all but two of his eight children out of Saudi Arabia. In mid-March, authorities imprisoned Omar, 21, and Sara, 20, in what was widely considered an effort to force his return from exile. Mr. Aljabri has vast counter-terrorism experience and deep knowledge of some of Saudi Arabia’s most sensitive information including the foreign bank accounts and financial assets of senior Saudi Royal Family members. This knowledge, he alleges, is why the Crown Prince wants him dead. “Dr. Saad was privy to sensitive information about defendant bin Salman’s covert political scheming within the Royal Court, corrupt business dealings, and creation of a team of personal mercenaries that defendant bin Salman would later use to carry out the extrajudicial of Jamal Khashoggi, among others.” The court documents say Mr. Aljabri has saved thousands of American lives, including providing key intelligence that prevented a terrorist plot targeting synagogues in Chicago. He alleges in the court filing that MBS believes Mr. Aljabri is responsible for the CIA’s conclusion that MBS ordered the killing of Mr. Khashoggi. The Crown Prince has denied that he ordered the killing. The Globe and Mail reported in Julythat the Saudis tried to have Mr. Aljabri arrested through an Interpol warrant in late 2017 and later asked Canada to extradite him in the fall of 2019, even though Ottawa does not have an extradition treaty with Riyadh. Mr. Aljabri intervened in 2012 on Canada’s behalf to commute the public beheading of Saudi-Canadian Mohamed Kohail, who was accused of murdering a man during a schoolyard brawl. A sentence of 200 lashes for his brother, Sultan, was also commuted. Before he came to Canada, Mr. Aljabri had been teaching at Harvard University but decided to move to Toronto because he was worried President Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner were too close to the Crown Prince and may not guarantee his safety, sources say. Mr. Aljabri has reason to fear the Crown Prince. In the court filing, Mr. Aljabri said the Crown Prince has sought to eliminate anyone who had a “direct line to senior U.S. intelligence officials and a wealth of potential harmful knowledge about” him. He alleges MBS uses his personal charitable organization, the MiSK Foundation, to fund the Tiger Squad and other covert activities abroad. The court filing lists the names of key figures in the foundation and alleges they cultivated a “network of covert agents whom he [MBS] has deployed to target individuals who undermine defendant bin Salman in the United States.” Relations between Canada and Saudi Arabia have been strained since August, 2018, when then-foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland tweeted that Saudi Arabia should “immediately release” imprisoned rights activists. The Saudis were enraged and recalled Ambassador Naif bin Bandar al-Sudairi, expelled Canadian ambassador Dennis Horak, halted the state-owned airline from flying to Toronto and ordered thousands of Saudi students studying in Canada to return home. Sources say Canada’s refusal to send Mr. Aljabri back was a contributing factor to the Saudi diplomatic reaction, as well as the inability of Ambassador al-Sudairi to get any high-level meeting with Canadian foreign-affairs officials. URL