#Ex-Saudi intelligence official claims crown prince tried to assassinate him

A former top Saudi Arabian intelligence official has publicly accused Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman of sending an assassination squad to Canada to kill him days after the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Saad Aljabri, a US intelligence ally, made the allegations in a federal lawsuit filed in Washington Thursday, charging that “there is virtually no one that Defendant bin Salman wants dead” more than him because of his relationship with the American government as “a longtime trusted partner of senior US intelligence officials,” the Washington Post reported.

Aljabri, who was a top aide in the Saudi Interior Ministry, but now lives in exile in Toronto, claims he is “uniquely positioned to existentially threaten Defendant bin Salman’s standing with the US Government,” the more than 100-page lawsuit says.

The suit claims that bin Salman was behind a conspiracy to kill Aljabri in Canada less than two weeks after Kashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was slain in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018.

The CIA has concluded that bin Salman ordered his operatives to carry out the grisly murder of Kashoggi.

Aljabri claims in the suit that bin Salman sent a “hit squad” to kill him, but that the team was stopped by Canadian customs officials who found them to be carrying forensic tools.

The suit also alleges that since March, Saudi authorities have detained Aljabri’s two adult children and brother, and tortured other relatives “all in an effort to bait [Aljabri] back to Saudi Arabia to be killed.”