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SAUDI-KHASHOGGI-CRIME-QAHTANI-ASSIRI,PROFILE
Saudi crown prince aides cleared in Khashoggi killing
RIYADH, Dec 23, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Saudi Arabia on Monday exonerated two
former top aides to powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the
gruesome murder of critic Jamal Khashoggi, citing insufficient evidence.
Deputy intelligence chief Ahmad al-Assiri and royal court media adviser
Saud al-Qahtani, both part of Prince Mohammed’s inner circle, were sacked two
weeks after the murder in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate in October 2018.
After a year of investigation and a subsequent closed-door trial, the
criminal court on Monday sentenced five defendants to death and jailed three
others.
Qahtani was investigated but not indicted however, while Assiri was charged
but cleared, the prosecutor said.
The exoneration of the two key figures named in the case is a surprising
turn of events, which analysts said would only fuel questions over who
masterminded the killing.
The fact that two senior aides to the crown prince have walked free
suggests “privileged treatment” and “double standards”, Quentin de Pimodan, a
Saudi expert at the Greece-based Research Institute for European and American
Studies, told AFP.
Here are the profiles of the two figures:
Ahmad al-Assiri
Assiri, said to be in his 60s, was a high-ranking adviser close to the
royal court and often attended Prince Mohammed’s closed-door meetings with
visiting foreign dignitaries.
Before his promotion to deputy head of general intelligence in 2017, Assiri
served as the spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen, which
has been battling Huthi rebels since 2015.
Fluent in French, English and Arabic, the hard-charging official developed
a reputation for hassling journalists whose reports were not to his liking.
The Saudi daily Al-Hayat once described the general, who trained at the
renowned French Saint-Cyr Military Academy, as the “best known Saudi pilot in
the world”.
Last year Britain apologised after an anti-war activist attempted to make a
citizen’s arrest of Assiri, over Saudi Arabia’s role in the Yemen conflict,
and threw an egg at him during a London visit.
Days before his sacking last year, the New York Times reported that Saudi
Arabia would assign blame for Khashoggi’s disappearance on Assiri to help
deflect blame from the crown prince.
Saud al-Qahtani
A key counsellor to Prince Mohammed, Qahtani was a media adviser in the
royal court.
He organised interviews with the prince for foreign journalists and also
served as the head of the “Centre for Studies and Media Affairs”, a unit
operating inside the royal court.
Saudi sources say Qahtani, said to be in his 40s, steered social media
propaganda campaigns against the kingdom’s adversaries including Qatar and
Iran.
With 1.3 million Twitter followers before his account was suspended a year
ago for violating the platform’s rules, the firebrand official was known for
aggressively targeting dissenters and rivals.
Writing for the Washington Post early last year, Khashoggi alleged Qahtani
maintained a “blacklist” of writers critical of the kingdom and was known to
intimidate them.
In an off-record interview with Newsweek magazine — posthumously published
in October 2018 — Khashoggi described Qahtani and another Saudi top official
Turki al-Sheikh as “thuggish”.
“People fear them. You challenge them, you might end up in prison, and that
has happened,” he was quoted as saying.
He called Qahtani the “most important man in media”, saying he controlled
the government’s public relations activities.
A known loyalist to Saudi rulers, Qahtani tweeted in 2017: “I don’t do
anything from my own head without an order. I am an employee and executer to
my king and my crown prince.”
BSS/AFP/ARS/1939 hrs