Crown Prince a Psychopath, Wanted to Kill Late King with Poison Ring from Russia: Ex-Saudi Official

A former top intelligence officer with Saudi Arabia’s elite intelligence team says he fears for his life because Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wants him dead and will use his “Tiger Squad” of henchmen to do it.

In a wide-ranging interview that aired Sunday on CBS’ 60 Minutes, Saad Aljabri, who was an adviser to former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, described bin Salman as a “psychopath with no empathy,” who “doesn’t feel emotion.”

In an interview on CBS News program “60 Minutes,” which aired Sunday, Saad Aljabri described watching a video recording of a meeting that he alleged took place in 2014 between MBS and his cousin, Mohammed bin Nayef (MBN), who was then Saudi Arabia’s head of intelligence. “He [MBS] told him [MBN], I want to assassinate King Abdullah. I get a poison ring from Russia. It’s enough for me just to shake hands with him and he will be done,” Aljabri said. “That what he say. Whether he’s just bragging or, but he said that and we took it seriously.”

King Abdullah died in 2015 after a decade-long reign. His brother Salman was crowned king after his death; two years later, Salman removed bin Nayef and appointed his own son, known as MBS, as crown prince. A year later, MBS became an international pariah for his suspected role in the gruesome death of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and pointed critic of the kingdom.

Aljabri left Saudi Arabia in 2017 after he was forced out of his job, fleeing with all but two of his eight children and his wife. While there, two of his children were imprisoned as they were preparing to leave for college in the U.S. He says he has not spoken to them since.

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Aljabri said he is also a target for the same sort of killing squad that lured Khashoggi to a Saudi consulate in Turkey, where he was murdered and dismembered. Canada stopped a similar team that arrived in Ottawa to kill Aljabri shortly after Khashoggi’s murder. “I expect to be killed one day because this guy will not rest until he [sees] me dead,” Aljabri said.

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