The Saudi Crown Prince suggested killing King Abdullah, the former official said

The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia suggested using a “poisonous ring” to kill the late King Abdullah, a former senior Saudi intelligence official said.

In an interview with CBS, Saad al-Jabri claimed that Mohammed bin Salman told his cousin in 2014 that he wanted to free the throne for his father.

There were tensions within the ruling family at the time over the succession.

The Saudi government has called Jabri a discredited former official with a long manufacturing history.

In his interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes program Jabri warned that Crown Prince Mohammed – the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia and son of King Salman – was a “psychopath, murderer, in the Middle East with infinite resources, posing a threat to his people, Americans and for the planet “.

He said at a 2014 meeting the prince suggested to his cousin Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the then interior minister, that he could arrange for the killing of King Abdullah.

“He told him, ‘I want to assassinate King Abdullah. I get a poison ring from Russia. I just have to shake his hand and it will be done,'” Jabri said.

“That he’s just bragging … he said it and we took it seriously.”

He said the matter was being resolved privately within the royal court. But he added that the meeting was secretly filmed and that he knew where two copies of the video recording were.

Abdullah died at the age of 90 in 2015 and was succeeded by his half-brother Salman, the father of Mohammed bin Salman, who made Mohammed bin Nayef crown prince.

In 2017, Mohammed bin Nayef was replaced as heir to the throne by Mohammed bin Salman. He also lost his role as Interior Minister and was reportedly placed under house arrest before being arrested last year on unspecified charges.

Jabri fled to Canada after Mohammed bin Nayef was ousted.

He said in the interview that he was warned by a friend in a Middle Eastern intelligence service that Mohammed bin Salman was sending an assassination team to kill him in October 2018, just days after Saudi agents killed dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. in Turkey.

It said a team of six landed at an Ottawa airport but was deported after customs found it was carrying “suspicious DNA analysis equipment.”

Last year, Jabri accused the Crown Prince of attempted murder in a civil suit filed in a U.S. federal court.

The prince denied the charges. He also denied any involvement in Jamal Khashoggi’s killing, although US intelligence agencies assessed that he approved the operation.

The BBC has contacted the Saudi government to comment on the allegations.

In a statement sent to CBS, the Saudi Embassy in Washington labeled Jabri as “a discredited former government official with a long history of fabricating and creating distractions to hide the financial crimes he has committed, which amount to billions of dollars,” to provide a sumptuous lifestyle for himself and his family ”.

Mr. Jabri has been sued for corruption by various Saudi entities and a Canadian judge has frozen his assets saying there is “overwhelming evidence of fraud”.

He denies stealing money from the government, saying his former employers rewarded him generously.

In March 2020, Saudi authorities arrested Jabri’s son Omar and daughter Sarah in what human rights groups said was an apparent attempt to force him to return to Saudi Arabia.

Last November, two months after their father sued the crown prince, the brothers were sentenced to nine and six and a half years in prison respectively by a Saudi court after being convicted of money laundering and “escape attempt. “from the country. They denied the allegations.

An appeals court upheld their sentences in a secret hearing at which they were not present.