What the Saudis [our good 'friends' of the National Security State] got up to in Turkey

[Peter Lemkin]

Saudi Arabia's missing princes

By Reda El Mawy

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  14 August 2017
  

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Image captionPrince Sultan bin Turki, pictured centreBetween 2015 and 2017, three Saudi princes living in Europe disappeared. All were critical of the Saudi government - and there is evidence that all were abducted and flown back to Saudi Arabia… where nothing further has been heard from them.
Early in the morning on 12 June 2003, a Saudi prince is being driven to a palace on the outskirts of Geneva.
His name is Sultan bin Turki bin Abdulaziz, and the palace belongs to his uncle, the late King Fahd. It's the king's favourite son, Prince Abdulaziz bin Fahd, who has invited him to breakfast.
Abdulaziz asks Sultan to return to Saudi Arabia - where he says a conflict over Sultan's criticisms of the Saudi leadership will be resolved.
Sultan refuses, at which point Abdulaziz excuses himself to make a phone call. The other man in the room, the Saudi Minister of Islamic Affairs, Sheikh Saleh al-Sheikh, leaves too and after a few moments masked men rush in. They beat Sultan and handcuff him, then a needle is plunged into his neck.
Unconscious, Sultan is rushed to Geneva airport - and carried on to a Medevac plane that is conveniently waiting on the tarmac.
Such, at least, is Sultan's account of the events, as told to a Swiss court many years later.
Among Sultan's staff, waiting at a Geneva hotel for him to return from his breakfast appointment, was his communications officer, Eddie Ferreira.
"Progressively, as the day went on the silence became deafening," he remembers. "We couldn't reach the security team. That was the first real alert. We tried to contact the prince; there was no response, no answer."
Then, in the afternoon, two unexpected visitors arrived.
"The Saudi ambassador to Switzerland came in with the general manager of the hotel and quite simply just told everybody to vacate the penthouse and get out," Ferreira says. "The prince was in Riyadh, our services were no longer required, and we could leave."
What had Prince Sultan done that could have led his family to violently drug and kidnap him?
The previous year he had arrived in Europe for medical treatment, and started giving interviews critical of the Saudi government. He condemned the country's record on human rights, complained about corruption among princes and officials, and called for a series of reforms.
Ever since 1932, when King Abdulaziz, known as Ibn Saud, founded Saudi Arabia, the country has been ruled as an absolute monarchy. It does not tolerate dissent.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES
Image captionPrince Turki bin Bandar meets Pakistan's finance minister in 2003Prince Turki bin Bandar was once a major in the Saudi police, with responsibility for policing the royal family itself. But a bitter family dispute over a contested inheritance landed him in prison, and on his release he fled to Paris, where, in 2012, he began posting videos on YouTube calling for reform in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis reacted as they had with Prince Sultan, and tried to persuade Turki to return. When Ahmed al-Salem, the deputy minister of the interior called, the prince recorded the conversation and posted it online.
"Everybody's looking forward to your return, God bless you," says the deputy minister.
"Looking forward to my return?" replies Turki. "What about the letters your officers send me? 'You son of a whore, we'll drag you back like Sultan bin Turki.'"
The deputy minister replies reassuringly: "They won't touch you. I'm your brother."
"No they're from you," says Turki. "The Ministry of Interior sends them."
Turki went on publishing videos until July 2015. Then, sometime later that year, he disappeared.
"He called me every month or two," says a friend, the blogger and activist Wael al-Khalaf.
"Then he disappeared for four or five months. I was suspicious. [Then] I heard from a senior officer in the kingdom that Turki bin Bandar was with them. So they'd taken him, he'd been kidnapped."
After a long search for news of Turki, I found an article in a Moroccan newspaper, which said that he had been about to return to France after a visit to Morocco, when he was arrested and jailed. Then, following a request from the Saudi authorities, he was deported with the approval of a Moroccan court.
We don't know for certain what happened to Turki bin Bandar, but before he disappeared he gave his friend Wael a copy of a book he'd written, in which he had added what may be a prophetic note.
"Dear Wael, these statements are not to be shared unless I am kidnapped or assassinated. I know I will be kidnapped or they will assassinate me. I also know how they abuse my rights and those of the Saudi people."

Image captionSaud bin Saif al-NasrAround the same time as Prince Turki vanished another Saudi prince, Saud bin Saif al-Nasr - a relatively minor royal with a liking for Europe's casinos and expensive hotels - shared a similar fate.
In 2014 Saud began writing tweets that were critical of the Saudi monarchy.
He called for the prosecution of Saudi officials who'd backed the overthrow of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi the previous year.
Then, in September 2015, Saud went further.
After an anonymous Saudi prince wrote two letters calling for a coup to remove King Salman, Saud publicly endorsed them - the only royal to do so. This was tantamount to treason, and may have sealed his fate.
A few days later, he tweeted: "I call for the nation to turn the content of these letters into popular pressure." Then his Twitter account went silent.
Another dissident prince - Prince Khaled bin Farhan, who fled to Germany in 2013 - believes Saud was tricked into flying from Milan to Rome to discuss a business deal with a Russian-Italian company seeking to open branches in the Gulf.
"A private plane from the company came and took Prince Saud. But it didn't land in Rome, it landed in Riyadh," Khaled says.
"It turned out Saudi intelligence had fabricated the entire operation," he claims.
"Now Prince Saud's fate is the same as Prince Turki's, which is prison… The only fate is an underground prison."