Ex-Saudi official claims crown prince boasted in 2014 he could kill king
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A former senior Saudi security
official who helped oversee joint U.S. counterterrorism efforts claimed in an
interview with “60 Minutes” that the kingdom’s crown prince once spoke of
killing a sitting Saudi monarch before his own father was crowned king.
Saad al-Jabri did not provide evidence to the CBS News
program, which aired Sunday.
The ex-intelligence official, who resides in exile in
Canada, claimed that in 2014, Prince Mohammed boasted that he could kill King
Abdullah. At the time, Prince Mohammed held no senior role in government but
was serving as gatekeeper to his father’s royal court when his father was still
heir to the throne. King Salman ascended to the throne in January 2015 after
his half-brother, King Abdullah, died of stated natural causes.
Al-Jabri used the interview to warn Prince Mohammed bin
Salman that he’s recorded a video that reveals even more royal secrets and some
of the United States. A short, silent clip was shown to “60 Minutes”
correspondent Scott Pelley. The video, al-Jabri said, could be released if he’s
killed.
It’s the latest attempt by the ex-counterterrorism official
to try to pressure the 36-year-old crown prince, whom the al-Jabri family says
has detained two of al-Jabri’s adult children and is using them as pawns to
force their father back to Saudi Arabia. If he returns, al-Jabri faces possible
abuse, imprisonment or house arrest like his former boss, the once-powerful
interior minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who was ousted from the line of
succession by Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2017.
Al-Jabri, 62, claims the crown prince will not rest until
“he see me dead” because “he fears my information.” He described Prince
Mohammed bin Salman as “a psychopath, killer.”
The crown prince drew global outcry after it emerged that
aides who worked for him had killed Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi inside the
Saudi Consulate in Turkey in October 2018. After recordings from inside the
consulate were leaked by Turkish authorities, the Saudis claimed it had been an
effort meant to forcibly bring Khashoggi back to the country, and that it went
awry. The crown prince denied any knowledge of the operation, despite a U.S.
intelligence assessment to the contrary.
Al-Jabri claimed that in a 2014 meeting with Prince Mohammed
bin Nayef, who was head of intelligence as interior minister at the time, the
much younger Prince Mohammed bin Salman said he could kill King Abdullah to
make way for his father’s rise to the throne.
“He told him, ‘I want to assassinate King Abdullah. I get a
poison ring from Russia. It’s enough for me just to shake hand with him and he
will be done,’” Al-Jabri said, and claimed that Saudi intelligence took the
threat seriously. The issue was handled within the royal family, al-Jabri said.
A video recording of that meeting still exists, he said.
The Saudi government told CBS News that al-Jabri is “a
discredited former government official with a long history of fabricating and
creating distractions to hide the financial crimes he committed.” The
government has issued extradition requests and Interpol notices for al-Jabri,
alleging he is wanted for corruption. Al-Jabri claims his wealth comes from the
generosity of the kings he’s served.
While it is not the first time al-Jabri has tried to exert
pressure on the crown prince, it is his first on-record interview since his son
Omar al-Jabri, 23, and daughter Sarah al-Jabri, 21, were detained in March 2020
in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A son-in-law was allegedly kidnapped from a third
country, forcibly returned to Saudi Arabia, tortured and detained.
Human Rights Watch says the arrest of family members is an
apparent effort to coerce al-Jabri to return to Saudi Arabia. A Saudi court
sentenced his son and daughter to nine and six-and-a-half years in prison,
respectively, for money laundering and unlawfully attempting to flee Saudi
Arabia, according to the rights group. An appeals court reportedly upheld the
prison sentence in May, without informing the family.
Al-Jabri has filed a federal lawsuit in the United States
against the Saudi crown prince, alleging the royal tried to trap and kill him
in the U.S. and Canada.
Meanwhile, Saudi entities are suing him in the U.S. and
Canada, claiming he stole some half-a-billion dollars from the counterterrorism
budget. A Canadian judge has frozen his assets due to evidence of fraud as the
case proceeds, according to the CBS News report.
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