Khashoggi and the Crown Prince by Owen Wilson

Author:Owen Wilson [Wilson, Owen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Middle East, Civilisations, Politics, Murder, Non-Fiction, History
ISBN: 9781783340699
Google: rO2pwgEACAAJ
Publisher: Gibson Square
Published: 2019-10-14T23:00:00+00:00

9 ‘Tourists’

ℭ

Now that the Turkish government had dispelled any hope that Khashoggi was alive by leaking the existence of a murder tape, the media paused to consider the wider risks and perils of being a Saudi national. (Khashoggi’s elite Saudi murder squad would have done well to take note.) Khaled bin Farhan, a Saudi prince living in exile in Germany, told the Independent: ‘Over thirty times the Saudi authorities have told me to meet them in the Saudi embassy but I have refused every time. I know what can happen if I go into the embassy.’

Only two thousand out of some fifteen thousand princes control Saudi Arabia’s wealth and Khashoggi was, due to his closeness to the inner sanctum, an insider. A run-of-the-mill prince would have even less protection than he had. They were privileged but essentially powerless individuals. Khaled bin Farhan added that there was deep anxiety among ordinary royals as to what had happened to Khashoggi.

‘Around ten days before Jamal went missing they asked my family to bring me to Cairo to give me a cheque. I refused. Many, many princes are in jail right now in Saudi. Just five days ago a group tried to visit King Salman saying they were afraid for the future of the al-Saud family, they mentioned Mr Khashoggi’s case. They were all put in jail.’

Khaled bin Farhan’s story echoed the fate of another royal, prince Sultan bin Turki, grandson of Saudi Arabia’s first king, Ibn Saud. He had vanished on the way Egypt in 2016 after criticising the Saudi regime.

‘If I disappear you know what happened to me’ was the last thing Sultan said to Bel Trew, the Middle East correspondent of the Independent.

Another of Sultan’s friends said: ‘I spoke to him before he got on the flight.… He actually joked that should he not make it, it was likely he was in Riyadh and I should raise the alarm.’

The prince was lured to Cairo, travelling on a royal private jet to see his father. But he was drugged and flown to Saudi Arabia instead. He was believed to be alive but under house arrest. His friends no longer have the means of contacting him. He had previously been kidnapped and drugged in Geneva in 2003 after calling for reform. Back in Riyadh he was held under house arrest and only returned to Europe in 2015 for medical treatment.

Saud bin Saif, a relatively minor prince who publicly backed calls for King Salman’s removal, also went missing in 2016. Khaled bin Farhan thought Saud had been tricked into getting on a Saudi-owned private jet which, instead of landing in Rome, flew on to Riyadh. Prince Turki bin Bandar, once a major in the police who took to publishing videos criticizing the regime, disappeared in 2015 after applying for asylum in France. Khaled bin Farhan believed both Turki bin Bandar and Saud may be dead. Ghanem al-Dosari, a Saudi satirist in exile in London, said he had not set foot in a Saudi embassy for nearly a decade, even though his passport expired in 2010.

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