Saad Aljabri, a former Saudi minister of state and close aide of ex-crown prince and intelligence boss Mohammed bin Nayef, has been in exile since 2017. He has repeatedly alleged that Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is plotting to kill him. Aljabri fled Saudi Arabia for Canada after MBS ousted bin Nayef from his position.
Now, in a particularly explosive interview with CBS’ ‘60 Minutes’ show, Aljabri stepped up his claims against the Saudi kingdom’s de facto ruler. The show introduces Aljabri as having once been “among the best friends America had against terrorism.”
“I am here to sound the alarm about a psychopath, killer, in the Middle East with infinite resources, who poses a threat to his people, to the Americans and to the planet,” Aljabri tells his interviewer, Scott Pelley.
MBS is “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,” he adds. The crown prince is allegedly holding two of the former high-ranking spy’s children and his son-in-law in captivity, trying to use them as a bargaining chip to make him return to Riyadh.
But the Saudi government insists that Aljabri is a financial criminal, who embezzled over $3 billion while working under bin Nayef. The ex-spymaster claims the reason for his massive wealth is that the Saudi monarchs had been “very generous” to him during his years of service. “It’s a tradition in the Saudi Arabian royal family. They take care of people around them,” he told CBS.
In order to support his claims about bin Salman’s rogue nature, the ex-intelligence official shared a story of how MBS once boasted he could poison the then-king Abdullah to clear the path to the throne for his father.
