Category Archives: Mohammed bin Salman

Boris Johnson upbeat on Saudi oil supply as kingdom executes three more

Posted on by

PM accused of ‘trading blood for oil’ as he seeks increased Middle East output to lessen reliance on Russia

Boris Johnson has hinted Saudi Arabia could speed up oil production to help calm spiralling energy prices for Britons, as he praised the country for improving its human rights record despite three more people being executed during his visit.

With pressure rising at home over a cost of living crisis compounded by western countries trying to end their reliance on Russian imports, the UK prime minister made a dash to the Middle East to urge leaders to help stabilise oil prices by ramping up supply.

Continue reading...

Johnson compares Putin to drug dealer ahead of Saudi Arabia trip

Posted on by

British PM hopes to persuade Gulf state to raise oil and gas production to reduce reliance on Moscow

Boris Johnson has compared Vladimir Putin to a drug dealer who managed to hook western nations on Russian supplies of oil and gas, ahead of a trip to the Middle East in an attempt to diversify the sources of Britain’s energy imports.

The UK prime minister urged European countries to “get ourselves off that addiction” and said he wanted support from “the widest possible coalition” to help offset the pressures caused by spiralling oil and gas prices.

Continue reading...

Outspoken Saudi princess released after nearly three years in jail

Posted on by

Human rights advocate Princess Basmah and her daughter were imprisoned without charge in 2019

Saudi authorities have released a princess and her daughter who had been detained without charge for nearly three years.

Princess Basmah bint Saud bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, 57, an outspoken human rights advocate and member of the royal family, went missing in March 2019 along with her adult daughter Souhoud al-Sharif.

Continue reading...

Jamal Khashoggi killers living in luxury villas in Riyadh, say witnesses

Posted on by

Exclusive: Reports of hit squad members living freely casts further doubt on Saudi claims that justice has been served

At least three members of a Saudi hit squad convicted by the kingdom of murdering Jamal Khashoggi are living and working “in seven-star accommodation” inside a government-run security compound in Riyadh, according to a source connected to senior members of Saudi intelligence.

The assassins are believed to be staying in villas and buildings run by Saudi Arabia’s State Security agency – far from the walls of its infamous prisons. The source has spoken to two witnesses who claim to have seen the men. They said family members frequently visit the men, who are able to use a gym and workspaces on the site.

Continue reading...

As Arab leaders gather in Saudi Arabia King Salman’s absence looms large

Posted on by

With the king barely seen for 20 months, the crown prince is holding the reins of power – and unbothered by who knows it

Beaming in satisfaction as Arab rulers arrived in Riyadh on Tuesday, Mohammed bin Salman looked like a man in charge. As a succession of planes disgorged heads of state for a regional summit, the Saudi crown prince was there to receive them – standing in for his father at yet another big event.

But as Prince Mohammed ushered leaders of Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain along a purple carpet to a reception hall, the king’s absence loomed large. If the ailing monarch was to reappear in public – a once every five year gathering under his auspices would have been the time and place.

Continue reading...

Emmanuel Macron accused of trying to ‘rehabilitate’ Mohammed bin Salman

Posted on by

Human rights groups criticise French president’s planned meeting with crown prince in Saudi Arabia

Human rights groups have criticised Emmanuel Macron’s planned meeting with Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, which will mark the first one-on-one public meeting of a major western leader with the crown prince since the state-sponsored assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

For three years since the 2018 murder, western heads of state have avoided direct one-on-one meetings with the crown prince in the kingdom. The US president, Joe Biden, has even avoided speaking to the future king in what has widely been seen as an attempt to avoid conferring legitimacy on the de facto ruler.

But Macron’s move suggests at least one major western leader is ready to formally re-establish ties to the crown prince directly, less than a year after US intelligence agencies released a report stating they believed that Prince Mohammed had approved the murder of Khashoggi.

Continue reading...

Specter of problematic crown prince looms over Biden’s Saudi Arabia policy

Posted on by

The president has snubbed Mohammed bin Salman, but the ruler recently labelled a ‘psychopath’ is a problem that won’t go away

When Joe Biden was recently asked whether gas prices would come down soon, the US president offered a cryptic explanation of how his strained relations with Saudi Arabia were at least partly to blame for the price at the pump.

Gas prices were high because oil-rich nations in the Middle East were not increasing the supply of oil. That was happening, Biden suggested, in retaliation for his personal decision to not speak with – nor acknowledge – Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as his counterpart.

Continue reading...

Saudi crown prince a ‘psychopath’, says exiled intelligence officer

Posted on by

Saad Aljabri says Mohammed bin Salman boasted he could kill former ruler King Abdullah

A former senior Saudi intelligence officer has claimed that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a “psychopath with no empathy” who once boasted that he could kill the kingdom’s ruler at the time, King Abdullah, and replace him with his own father.

In an interview on US television, Saad Aljabri, who fled Saudi Arabia in May 2017 and is living in exile in Canada, also said he had been warned by an associate in 2018, after the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, that a Saudi hit team was heading to Canada to kill him.

Continue reading...

Revealed: Newcastle chairman’s links to Saudi ‘anti-corruption’ drive

Posted on by

Court documents shed new light on Yasir al-Rumayyan’s relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Yasir al-Rumayyan, the new non-executive chairman of Newcastle United, was involved in a controversial “anti-corruption” campaign in Saudi Arabia that included the transfer of assets on behalf of the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Details of Rumayyan’s role – including the transfer of a charter jet company to the Public Investment Fund (PIF), where he serves as governor – are contained in court documents that shed light on his relationship with Prince Mohammed.

Continue reading...

Saudi aide accused of directing Khashoggi murder edges back to power

Posted on by

Saud al-Qahtani, aide to Mohammed bin Salman, hailed as patriot on pro-government social media

Three years after the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi royal court adviser accused of directing the murder is being quietly reintroduced by pro-government influencers as a patriotic figure who has served his country well.

Social media accounts that back the Saudi leadership have in recent months been posting tributes to Saud al-Qahtani, a chief aide to crown prince and Saudi Arabia’s effective leader, Mohammed bin Salman, in a move that is seen as marking his gradual return to the seat of Saudi power. Qahtani vanished from public view in the aftermath of the gruesome killing in Istanbul that shocked the world and almost derailed his boss’s path to the throne.

Continue reading...

Saudi-backed Newcastle takeover as much about status as sportswashing

Posted on by

Riyadh will hope acquisition can not only improve kingdom’s image but also serve as a highly conspicuous display of wealth

From heavyweight boxing to horse racing, from wrestling events to a grand prix; Saudi Arabia’s association with sport has become an integral, and contentious, part of its efforts to rebrand.

But its latest play – taking a majority stake in Newcastle United Football Club – is the kingdom’s boldest move yet, placing it firmly on the world’s sporting stage, and squarely in the crosshairs of its critics.

Continue reading...

Did Jordan’s closest allies plot to unseat its king?

Posted on by

Alleged sedition and a royal family feud may have been driven by a broader plan to reshape the Middle East

The phone call that shook the Jordanian government came in the second week of March this year. On the line to the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) in Amman was the US Embassy, seeking an urgent meeting about a matter of national importance. The kingdom’s spies were startled. Danger was brewing on the home front, they were told, and could soon pose a threat to the throne.

Within hours, the GID had turned its full array of resources towards one of the country’s most senior royals, Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, a former crown prince and half-brother of the king, whom the Americans suspected was sowing dissent and had begun rallying supporters. By early April, officials had placed Hamzah under house arrest and publicly accused the former heir and two close aides of plotting to unseat King Abdullah.

Continue reading...

‘Weak’ US let Saudis jail more dissidents, says rights group

Posted on by

Lack of US sanctions on crown prince led to harsher sentences for critics of regime, Grant Liberty reports

The Biden administration’s failure to impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has led to a increase in severe sentences for political prisoners in the kingdom, the Guardian can reveal.

The UK-based human rights organisation Grant Liberty found that twice as many harsh sentences had been meted out to Saudi prisoners of conscience in April than in the first three months of this year combined. It followed the Biden administration’s decision on 26 February to publish an intelligence report that showed the crown prince, “approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi”.

Continue reading...

Saudi crown prince asked Boris Johnson to intervene in Newcastle United bid

Posted on by

Mohammed bin Salman warned of damage to Saudi-UK relations if Premier League refusal not ‘corrected’

The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, warned Boris Johnson in a text message that UK-Saudi Arabian relations would be damaged if the British government failed to intervene to “correct” the Premier League’s “wrong” decision not to allow a £300m takeover of Newcastle United last year.

Johnson asked Edward Lister, his special envoy for the Gulf, to take up the issue, and Lord Lister reportedly told the prime minister: “I’m on the case. I will investigate.”

Continue reading...

Saudi accused of threat to Khashoggi UN investigator is human rights chief

Posted on by

Awwad al-Awwad, former aide of crown prince, denies threatening to ‘take care of’ Agnès Callamard

The Saudi official who is alleged to have twice issued threats against the independent UN investigator Agnès Callamard is the head of the kingdom’s human rights commission, and formerly served as an aide to the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Awwad al-Awwad is alleged by a person familiar with the matter to have twice threatened to “take care of” Callamard at a January 2020 meeting with senior human rights officials in Geneva.

Continue reading...

Top Saudi official issued death threat against UN’s Khashoggi investigator

Posted on by

Senior official twice threatened to have Agnès Callamard ‘taken care of’ in meeting with UN colleagues in Geneva in January 2020

A senior Saudi official issued what was perceived to be a death threat against the independent United Nations investigator, Agnès Callamard, after her investigation into the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In an interview with the Guardian, the outgoing special rapporteur for extrajudicial killings said that a UN colleague alerted her in January 2020 that a senior Saudi official had twice threatened in a meeting with other senior UN officials in Geneva that month to have Callamard “taken care of” if she was not reined in by the UN.

Continue reading...

Biden defends move not to punish Saudi crown prince over Khashoggi killing

Posted on by

President claims sanction for Mohammed bin Salman would have been diplomatically unprecedented but overstates US-Saudi ties

Joe Biden has defended his decision to waive any punishment for Saudi Arabia’s crown prince in the murder of a US-based journalist, claiming that acting against the Saudi royal would have been diplomatically unprecedented for the United States.

In an ABC News interview that aired on Wednesday, the US president discussed his administration’s decision to exempt Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from any penalties for the October 2018, killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Last month, the Biden administration released a declassified US intelligence report which concluded that the crown prince authorized the team of Saudi security and intelligence officials that killed Khashoggi.

Continue reading...

Rethink or reset? Joe Biden’s dilemma over Mohammed bin Salman

Posted on by

US president has chosen to ‘recalibrate’ relations with Saudi Arabia, but some say a rupture is required

In late 2019, as Joe Biden stood on a debate stage and boldly vowed to make Saudi Arabia a pariah if he was elected president, a little-known former aide and Middle East expert was examining what exactly a “progressive” post-Trump stance towards the oil-rich kingdom might look like.

Daniel Benaim, a policy wonk who had worked for Biden as a speechwriter, and for Hillary Clinton and John Kerry before that, first travelled to Saudi Arabia and then began interviewing dozens of Democratic and progressive policy experts to come up with a blueprint.

Continue reading...

US decision not to punish crown prince puts us in grave danger, Saudi exiles say

Posted on by

Dissidents decry lack of sanctions for Mohammed bin Salman over Khashoggi killing and warn of ‘permanent impunity’ for Saudi heir

Exiled dissidents who have been warned about threats against them by Saudi Arabia said they have been put in greater danger by the Biden administration’s decision to forgo direct sanctions on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – even as US intelligence agencies acknowledged that he was complicit in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

The activists, including some who have previously been warned that they were possibly at risk of being hurt by agents of the kingdom, said in interviews with the Guardian that they believed the 35-year-old crown prince would be emboldened after the White House declined to sanction him.

Continue reading...

Supporters of detained Saudi princess call for UK to help secure release

Posted on by

Exclusive: letters to Dominic Raab and Lady Scotland say Princess Basmah requires urgent medical treatment

Supporters of a prominent Saudi Arabian princess detained with her daughter in Riyadh have appealed to the British government to help secure their release.

In two letters to both foreign secretary Dominic Raab and Commonwealth general secretary Patricia Scotland, the princess’s supporters urged them to intervene on behalf of Princess Basmah bint Saud bin Abdulaziz al-Saud and her daughter Souhoud Al Sharif, arrested in Jeddah two years ago.

Continue reading...