‘To Protect Myself And My Family’: Saudi Critics Abroad Fear Long Reach Of The Crown

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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attends an Arab summit at al-Safa Royal Palace in Mecca on May 31, 2019.

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Prince Mohammed bin Nayef of Saudi Arabia prepares to address the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 21, 2016, in New York City.

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Aljabri declined an interview, but his son Khalid Aljabri, a cardiologist who lives with his father in Toronto, spoke to NPR.

He says soon after leaving the kingdom, his father received a cordial text message from the crown prince.

«You know, we had our disagreements but I need you back in government, Khalid Aljabri remembers the message saying. «He made it sound like just, ‘let’s come and have a clear the air talk and we’ll go back to business as usual,' he says. «We didn’t buy that.

The family thought it might be a trap.

Within a few days, Khalid says, two of Saad’s other children who were still in Saudi Arabia, ages 17 and 18 at the time, were barred from leaving the kingdom. The text messages became more aggressive and threatening.

«It was ultimatums, saying, ‘You have one hour to tell us where you are,’ you know, ‘I’ll send the jet to get you. Otherwise … we will use all legal means and other means that will be harmful to you,' Khalid recalls. He says his father has kept the texts as evidence.

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Saad Aljabri alleges that Crown Prince Mohammed has been trying to have him killed for the past three years. The lawsuit says that is largely because of the former official’s knowledge of the kingdom’s inner workings and dealings and his ties to U.S. intelligence officials. «Dr. Saad is uniquely positioned to existentially threaten Defendant bin Salman’s standing with the U.S. government, the suit says.

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People hold posters picturing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and lit candles during a gathering outside Saudi Arabia’s Consulate in Istanbul, on Oct. 25, 2018.

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Deibert says the regime has become very sophisticated at tracking citizens electronically on cellphones, allowing officials to see their location, emails and social media conversations.

«They take these very powerful tools that are marketed to them to fight ostensibly crime, national security issues and so on, and direct them towards regime opponents and journalists who cover Saudi issues, he says. «Especially those that have prominence in social media and in international media because they present a threat to the regime’s credibility and legitimacy.

Two years ago, researchers at the Citizen Lab said they discovered that the phone of Omar Abdulaziz, a prominent Saudi talk show host in Montreal who was critical of the Saudi royal family, was hacked with Saudi-linked spyware.

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Abdulaziz was a confidant of Khashoggi and said the two had been discussing plans to raise awareness about human rights in Saudi Arabia.

«Jamal was killed two months later. For sure the conversations between us played a major role in what happened to Jamal, Abdulaziz told NPR in 2018.

That year, Saudi officials arrested Abdulaziz’s relatives and friends Saudi Arabia to put pressure on him, he wrote in The Washington Post.

Abdulaziz was also being followed on Twitter, according to U.S. prosecutors who last year charged two former employees of the social platform with obtaining personal information of Saudis criticizing the regime. It is the first time federal prosecutors have charged Saudis with deploying agents inside the U.S.

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Ali Alzabarah, a Saudi citizen, worked at Twitter as a «site reliability engineer. The federal complaint says he accessed «data of over 6,000 Twitter users, including Abdulaziz. Another employee, Ahmad Abouammo, a U.S. citizen, allegedly received payments of up to $300,000 for information gleaned from his job at Twitter. A third man, Ahmed Almutairi, a Saudi citizen, was also charged with spying. He is described in the complaint as a principal in a social media marketing company that works for the Saudi royal family.

Placing agents inside Twitter was part of an ongoing national strategy by the Saudi regime, according to Adam Ereli, a former U.S. ambassador to Bahrain.

«Their infiltration of Twitter by their own agents was designed to obtain and then transmit back to the Saudi government the names, addresses and, very importantly, contact lists of users in Saudi Arabia who were then subsequently rounded up, Ereli said at a recent conference.

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For the apparent targets of spying, life is frightening even if they’re not in Saudi Arabia.

Ali al-Ahmed is the founder of the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, D.C., and a critic of the royal family. He lives in the U.S. but has safety concerns.

«Absolutely, I fear, of course, every day I go … look under my car, I look around the house, he says. «And I do everything I can to protect myself and my family.

Saad Aljabri, the former intelligence official, was not able to protect his family. In March, Saudi security forces swarmed his home near Riyadh and arrested his daughter and son, both in their early 20s.

The U.S. State Department has called the detentions of Aljabri’s family members «unacceptable and said it has repeatedly pressed Saudi Arabia to release them.

But the family hasn’t heard from them since.