Full Accountability Needed in Khashoggi Killing, Rights Groups Say
Turkey’s indictment of 20 Saudi officials is welcome, they say, but fails to hold all suspects and the Crown Prince to account
A former Saudi intelligence officer says the Saudi crown prince wants him dead and an assassination team dispatched to Canada to kill him was stopped by alert customs agents.
Saad al Jabri said in a lawsuit filed Thursday in a U.S. federal court that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wanted to silence him because he possesses “damning information” about the crown prince.
The veteran officer said in his uncorroborated suit that a hit squad was sent to Canada where the former intelligence officer lives, just weeks after writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Khashoggi is believed to have been dismembered in the consulate in an operation likely ordered by Salman. The writer, who had been critical of Salman, had gone to the consulate to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage.
Several of Jabri’s family members have been detained in Saudi Arabia in an effort to get him to return.
Jabri was on the staff of former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef where he was the intermediary for a number of Western spy agencies.
Court documents say the team sent to kill him were carrying bags of forensic tools for crime scene clean-up when they were stopped by suspicious Canadian border agents.
Observers say it is not clear if the court filing will move through the U.S. court system, but the filing has brought attention to Jabri’s situation and the crown prince’s targeting of him.