U.S. Court Issues Summons for Saudi Crown Prince

Date: 10 August 2020 - 21:35

News ID: ۸۱۵۷۷

RIYADH (Dispatches) – Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) has been issued a summons by a U.S. court for a lawsuit by a former top Saudi intelligence agent who was reportedly targeted in a foiled assassination attempt.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued the summons on Friday, a day after Saad al-Jabri filed the lawsuit accusing Prince Mohammed of sending a hit squad to Canada to try and kill him.
Al-Jabri, who lives in Canada, claimed that his close ties with the U.S. intelligence community and deep knowledge of the prince’s activities had rendered him one of the aspiring monarch’s key targets.
"Few places hold more sensitive, humiliating and damning information about Defendant bin Salman than the mind and memory of Dr. Saad - except perhaps the recordings Dr. Saad made in anticipation of his killing,” the lawsuit read.
Saudi Arabia, which has issued Interpol red notices seeking al-Jabri’s return - which have since been dismissed by the agency as political - has urged other countries to send al-Jabri back to the kingdom, accusing the former senior intelligence officer of corruption.
The summons, which named 12 people in addition to Prince Mohammed, added: "If you fail to respond, judgment by default will be entered against you for the relief demanded in the complaint”.
The lawsuit says that a team of Saudi agents carrying forensic gear and including forensic experts arrived at an airport in Ontario in October 2018. They tried to enter on Canadian tourist visas but were turned away by Canadian border officials.
According to the lawsuit, the Saudi crown prince had ordered the detention of two of Al-Jabri’s children, who went missing from their home in Riyadh in mid-March, in a bid to force Al-Jabri to return to Saudi Arabia.
Attempts by the Saudi regime to forcibly return certain citizens living abroad began attracting global attention after the gruesome assassination of Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi two years ago.
The ill-fated dissident, an MBS critic and Washington Post journalist, was executed and dismembered after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. The journalist is widely believed to have been murdered on bin Salman’s direct orders.