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Saudi crown prince asks US court to dismiss former top spy's assassination lawsuit

Thursday, 10 December 2020 4:32 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 10 December 2020 5:03 PM ]

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends a session of the Shura Council in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on November 20, 2019. (Photo by Reuters)

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) has asked a US federal court to drop a lawsuit, which accuses him of trying to have a former Saudi intelligence official assassinated in Canada, saying there is no evidence to support the claim.

Michael Kellogg, a lawyer representing MbS, said in an 87-page motion that the 106-page lawsuit filed in August on behalf of Saad al-Jabri, an exiled former aide to former Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, did not present convincing proof that the crown prince “dispatched a “hit squad” to kill him in October 2018.

Nayef was overthrown in a 2017 palace coup that left MbS as the country’s most powerful prince.

The motion also said that bin Salman was protected by laws of sovereign immunity and thus could not be charged in a US court.

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Sovereign immunity is a legal doctrine that holds sovereign states, heads of state, immediate members of their families and other high-ranking government officials are immune from prosecution.

The filing, meanwhile, accused al-Jabri and his family of taking part in the misappropriation and theft of $11 billion meant for counter-terrorism operations when he was a senior official at the Saudi Interior Ministry between 2001 and 2015. Al-Jabri has denied the allegations.

Al-Jabri claims he obtained information during his time as an aide and as a top Saudi intelligence official that could be threatening to the country’s crown prince. This accordingly motivated MbS to organize an assassination attempt against him using the so-called “Tiger” hit squad.

The alleged attempt purportedly took place 13 days after members of the Tiger squad were involved in the killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.

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Canadian authorities, however, foiled the attempt when the Tiger squad arrived at the border and aroused the suspicion of security officials.

Douglas London, a former senior CIA operations officer, said in August that he found the idea of an assassination attempt plausible, but said it was also possible the men in question sought to place al-Jabri under surveillance.

“I don't rule out the possibility that MbS wanted to kill [al-Jabri], but it's just as likely, if not more so, that ... MbS wanted to put [al-Jabri] under observation, information from which might provide insight on his contacts and activities,” he commented at the time.

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