The legal war between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and their former spymaster
The family of a former top Saudi intelligence official who is living in exile and locked in an international feud with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman say they have become pawns in the kingdom's efforts to bring the spy chief home.
A Saudi court jailed two of Saad al-Jabri's adult children
late last year for money laundering and conspiracy to escape the kingdom
unlawfully, charges they deny.
Now, an attempt by the family to appeal the convictions has
failed, according to Saudi authorities. The Jabri family alleges that Saudi
authorities interfered in the legal process, including circumventing appeals
proceedings, which Riyadh denies.
A Saudi official told Reuters in a written statement that
the convictions of the Jabri children "were upheld on appeal."
The appeal, which hasn't been previously reported, comes as
the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has raised concerns with senior
Saudi officials about the children's detention and trial, according to the U.S.
State Department.
The family's assertions are the latest volley in an
acrimonious dispute playing out in courtrooms in the United States, Canada and
Saudi Arabia between the former intelligence official and the crown prince.
Known by the initials MbS, the crown prince has tightened his grip on power in
recent years. Jabri was a long-time aide to another royal, Prince Mohammed bin
Nayef, whom MbS ousted as heir to the throne in a 2017 palace coup. MbS is now
de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter and a key U.S.
ally.
Last summer, Jabri accused MbS in a civil suit in U.S.
federal court of sending agents in 2018 to Canada, where Jabri now lives, to
kill him. In January, a group of Saudi state-owned firms alleged in a lawsuit
in Canada that Jabri embezzled billions of dollars of state funds while working
at the Ministry of Interior.
Jabri spent many years as bin Nayef's closest aide at the
Ministry of Interior, including helping to overhaul the kingdom's intelligence
and counterterrorism operations. Jabri, via his son Khalid, declined to
comment.
Jabri's family say Omar and Sarah al-Jabri - aged 23 years
and 21 years, respectively - filed their appeal in late November in the court
of appeals in Riyadh. The two siblings currently are in prison in Saudi Arabia,
according to the Jabri family.
According to a document submitted by MbS's lawyers this
month in Jabri's U.S. suit against the crown prince, the Riyadh court of
appeals upheld the conviction of Omar and Sarah on Dec. 24. The document, dated
April 1 and stamped by the Saudi public prosecutor's office, summarizes the
charges against the siblings. The allegations include illegal financial
transactions involving "one of the accused," who isn't identified, as
well as plotting "to flee the Kingdom in an irregular manner."
The family said the siblings appealed their convictions, but
neither their lawyer nor Omar and Sarah were informed of any appeal proceedings
or a final verdict, which two legal experts said would be highly irregular if
true.
The family added that by January, the case disappeared from
the court docket. Reuters was not able to review the justice ministry's online
database, which is not publicly available.
The two legal experts said this would be unusual because the
appellants hadn't been notified of any appeals court proceedings or an outcome.
When the lawyer representing the siblings asked court officials about the
status of the appeal, the family say, the response was that the case had been
blocked, without elaborating.
The appeal "never happened," said Jabri's son
Khalid, who lives in Canada. Khalid said the irregularities pointed to
interference by MbS.
Reuters found no evidence of MbS's involvement in the
proceedings against the Jabri children. Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor's
office reports directly to the king under a decree issued in 2017.
The Saudi official who provided the written statement to
Reuters did not provide court documents relating to the proceedings when asked
to do so by the news agency. "All the applicable legal procedures were
followed throughout the case, and they were accorded all of their rights
(including representation by counsel)," the official said.
The official added that the charges on which the Jabri
siblings were convicted of were "not related to the case against their
father." However, an undated document the family say was part of the
prosecutor's case and provided to Reuters alleged that Omar and Sarah concealed
and used their father's bank accounts and that their roles were "coordinated
and planned" by their father without elaborating further.
In the civil case filed by Jabri against MbS and 24 others
in federal court in the District of Columbia, the former official is seeking
unspecified damages from the defendants under the Torture Victims Prevention
Act. The law has been used in the past to allow foreign nationals to file
complaints in the United States over human rights abuses committed abroad.
The crown prince's lawyers have rejected Jabri's allegations
and said MbS has legal immunity in the United States as a foreign head of
state.
In an April 5 motion to dismiss the case, MbS's lawyers said
the kingdom is seeking to extradite Jabri to prosecute him for fraud. The
lawyers also referred to a worldwide freeze on Jabri's assets issued in January
by the Ontario Superior Court as part of the Canadian suit against the former
official.
Khalid al-Jabri said his father has done nothing wrong. MbS
is pursuing Jabri, Khalid said, because of his father's knowledge of the
kingdom's inner workings.
Biden has made human rights a key issue in bilateral
relations with the kingdom.
The U.S. State Department, in a statement to Reuters, said
"we are deeply concerned" by reports of the detention and sentencing
of Jabri's children and that Washington "strongly condemns any unjust
action against family members of those accused of crimes."
"We have been in direct contact with senior Saudi
officials and will continue to raise our concerns," the department said.
Jabri was "a valued partner in countering terrorism whose work helped save
countless American and Saudi lives."
Canada's foreign ministry also expressed concern about their
detention.
Saudi authorities have made repeated attempts to lure the
former intelligence official back to the kingdom, according to the family.
Jabri alleges in his U.S. lawsuit that his knowledge of "sensitive,
humiliating and damning information" posed an existential threat to the
crown prince.
MbS's lawyers, in court filings, have dismissed as untrue
Jabri's assertions that the crown prince attempted to silence the former Saudi
official.
Omar and Sarah's trial in Riyadh's Criminal Court began in
September 2020, according to the family. The family told Reuters the hearings
were held behind closed doors, with relatives, media and foreign diplomats
barred from entering the court. The siblings were not granted access to their
lawyer before trial, and only two of the three judges overseeing the case
signed the verdict, the family said. The absence of a judge's signature from a
ruling would be unusual, according to two independent legal experts consulted
by Reuters.
A copy of the verdict, provided by the family and reviewed
by Reuters, shows digital signatures under two of the judges' names and none
under the third.
Omar and Sarah were sentenced in November to 9 years and 6.5
years in prison, respectively, according to the family and the document
submitted by MbS's lawyers this month in U.S. court. The siblings also received
fines totalling 1.5 million Saudi riyal, or about $400,000, and years-long bans
from leaving the country.
A lawyer for the siblings continued to maintain their
innocence and said the charges were not supported by direct evidence, according
to a copy of a 16-page appeal dated Nov. 29 and provided to Reuters by the
family. The appeal also challenges the confessions the prosecution cited as
evidence in the siblings' conviction, saying they were obtained through
coercion.
The three judges and clerk who oversaw the case have been
transferred to other courts, according to the family.
Taha al-Hajji, a Saudi lawyer living in exile in Germany,
said that some of the factors the family consider to be irregularities could
potentially be explained in isolation and have precedents such as judges being
moved in politically sensitive cases. But, when taken together, the various
elements cited by the family are highly irregular, he said.
"All of these details point to obscurantism and
political interference by Saudi authorities and show the lack of independence
in the kingdom's judiciary," said Hajji, who isn't involved in the Jabri
case.
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