Saudi prince ‘plotted to kill former king’

Ex-spy says he boasted of using a ‘poison ring’

AN EXILED Saudi intelligence chief has described his country’s crown prince as a ‘psychopath killer’.

Saad al Jabri, 62, who fled the kingdom in 2017, claimed Mohammed bin Salman – known as MBS – was a threat to his countrymen and the wider world.

He said the prince ‘feared’ he would give away state secrets, including that in 2014 he allegedly said he could have the then king Abdullah killed to pave the way for his own father, Salman.

Mr al Jabri, who was second in command of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service, said: ‘He told him, 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.’

He said the threat had been made at meeting which was filmed.

In an interview with American channel CBS, Mr al Jabri said: ‘I am here to sound the alarm about a psychopath, killer, in the Middle East with infinite resources, who poses threat to his people, to the Americans and to the planet. A psychopath with no empathy, doesn’t feel emotion, never learned from his experience.

‘And we have witnessed atrocities and crimes committed by this killer.’

Mr al Jabri said the Saudi leader was determined to kill him because of the secret information he held about the royal family.

He claimed he had been warned a sixstrong hit team was sent to Canada to murder him in October 2018.

The alleged assassination attempt came shortly after the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The married spy chief fled to Canada after Prince Mohammed took power by supplanting his cousin Mohammed bin Nayef. Bin Nayef was the country’s interior minister and Mr al Jabri’s boss.

Since fleeing the country, Mr al Jabri claims that two of his eight children, Sarah and Omar, who planned to attend US colleges were banned from leaving the kingdom and imprisoned.

The exiled spy also alleges that his son-inlaw was kidnapped and taken back to Saudi Arabia to be tortured and locked up.

Mr al Jabri is calling for the authorities in the US, where intelligence services credit him for helping to foil terrorist plots, to help have his children released.

The former spy master is being sued by Saudi bodies in the US and Canada for supposedly stealing up to £360million from the counter-terrorism budget.

A Saudi spokesman said: ‘Saad al Jabri is a discredited former government official with a long history of fabricating and creating distractions to hide the financial crimes he committed.’