Saudi Dissident Speaks Out, Calling Crown Prince 'a Psychopath' and Claiming He Spoke of Poisoning Former King
60 Minutes/Twitter Saad al-Jabri
A former Saudi Arabian intelligence official claimed in a new interview that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman talked about killing the kingdom's former monarch, King Abdullah, in 2014.
Saad al-Jabri, who fled to Canada in 2017, told 60 Minutes of an alleged meeting between bin Salman and Mohammed bin Nayef, who was then heir to the throne, during which bin Salman boasted that he could kill the sitting king.
"He told him, 'I want to assassinate King Abdullah,' " al-Jabri claimed in the interview that aired Sunday. "'I get a poison ring from Russia. It's enough for me just to shake hands with him and he will be done.' "
Al-Jabri further claimed that Saudi intelligence officials took the claim seriously, with the royal family recording a meeting in which they discussed the threat — two copies of which, he alleged, still exist.
"I know where they are," al-Jabri said of the purported recordings of the meeting.
Abdullah died in 2015, and bin Salman was appointed crown prince in 2017 — a rise to power that was clouded by its own controversy. He is also widely thought to be the orchestrator of a purge of high-ranking Saudi officials from 2017 through 2019, when a number of prominent princes and government ministers were arrested and confined to the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh.
Appearing on 60 Minutes Al-Jabri also spoke about the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist whom American authorities believe was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to be tortured, killed and dismembered inside the consulate by a hit squad flown in from Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
Speaking to 60 Minutes, al-Jabri called bin Salman "a psychopath with no empathy" and claimed that he was told a Saudi assassination team was also sent to kill him.
"The warning I received, 'Don't be in a proximity of any Saudi mission in Canada. Don't go to the consulate. Don't go to the embassy.' I said why? Said, 'They dismembered the guy, they kill him. You are on the top of the list,' " al-Jabri said.
After he fled to Canada, al-Jabri said the team of six would-be assassinations followed him, arriving at the Ottawa Airport in October 2018 carrying equipment purportedly used for DNA analysis. He said the six people were deported, with the Canadian government telling 60 Minutes in a statement: "We are aware of incidents in which foreign actors have attempted to… threaten… those living in Canada."
The Saudi Embassy did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment on al-Jabri's claims.
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Asked if he thinks bin Salman fears him, al-Jabri told 60 Minutes, "He fears my information."
Al-Jabri said that both his daughter and son are being held in Saudi prisons, where they have been since he fled the Kingdom. He added that his son-in-law was also recently kidnapped in another country and transferred back to Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi government did not respond to the show's request for an interview, but provided a statement calling al-Jabri "a discredited former government official with a long history of fabricating and creating distractions to hide the financial crimes he committed, which amount to billions of dollars, to finance a lavish lifestyle for himself and his family."
American intelligence officials, meanwhile, note that information provided by al-Jabri when he was second-in-command of Saudi intelligence — such as details of a 2010 plot to detonate a bomb over American soil using explosives hidden in printer cartridges — has saved American lives.
"He saved Saudi lives — many of them — and he saved American lives," former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell told 60 Minutes of al-Jabri.
Morell added that there are other instances in which al-Jabri saved American lives, though the details of those incidents remain top secret: "I can't talk about them because they're still classified ... There are many. Many."
Al-Jabri, for his part, told 60 Minutes he expects that bin Salman is out for revenge.
"I expect to be killed one day because this guy will not rest off until he see me dead," he said.
