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It Wasn’t Just Khashoggi: A Saudi Prince’s Brutal Drive to Crush Dissent

A symbolic funeral for Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist killed in the Saudi Consulate, in Istanbul in November.Credit...Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia authorized a secret campaign to silence dissenters — which included the surveillance, kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudi citizens — over a year before the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, according to American officials who have read classified intelligence reports about the campaign.

At least some of the clandestine missions were carried out by members of the same team that killed and dismembered Mr. Khashoggi in Istanbul in October, suggesting that his killing was a particularly egregious part of a wider campaign to silence Saudi dissidents, according to the officials and associates of some of the Saudi victims.

Members of the team that killed Mr. Khashoggi, which American officials called the Saudi Rapid Intervention Group, were involved in at least a dozen operations starting in 2017, the officials said.

Some of the operations involved forcibly repatriating Saudis from other Arab countries and detaining and abusing prisoners in palaces belonging to the crown prince and his father, King Salman, the officials and associates said.

One of the Saudis detained by the group, a university lecturer in linguistics who wrote a blog about women in Saudi Arabia, tried to kill herself last year after being subjected to psychological torture, according to American intelligence reports and others briefed on her situation.

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Images of King Salman and his son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman projected on screens during a conference at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh in January.Credit...Tasneem Alsultan for The New York Times

The rapid intervention team had been so busy that last June its leader asked a top adviser to Prince Mohammed whether the crown prince would give the team bonuses for Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, according to American officials familiar with the intelligence reports.

Details about the operations come from American officials who have read classified intelligence assessments about the Saudi campaign, as well as from Saudis with direct knowledge of some of the operations. They spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions from disclosing classified information or, in the case of the Saudis, from angering the Saudi government.

A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington said the kingdom “takes any allegations of ill treatment of defendants awaiting trial or prisoners serving their sentences very seriously.”

Saudi laws prohibit torture and hold accountable those involved in such abuses of power, the spokesman said, and judges cannot accept confessions obtained under duress. The kingdom’s public prosecutor and the Saudi Human Rights Commission are investigating “recent allegations,” he said.

The Saudi government insists that the killing of Mr. Khashoggi — a dissident journalist living in the United States who wrote for The Washington Post — was not an assassination ordered from Riyadh. The decision to kill him was made by the team on the spot, government officials say, and those responsible are being prosecuted. Turkey and American intelligence agencies say the killing was premeditated.

The kingdom says that 11 Saudis are facing criminal charges for the killing and that prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for five of them, but officials have not publicly identified the accused.

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Turkish forensic experts searching for the remains of Mr. Khashoggi at a villa in Turkey in November.Credit...Erdem Sahin/EPA, via Shutterstock

After the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, Saudi officials acknowledged that the Saudi intelligence service had a standing order to bring dissidents home. What they did not acknowledge was that a specific team had been built to do it.

Saudi officials declined to confirm or deny that such a team existed, or answer questions about its work.

Saudi Arabia has a history of going after dissidents and other Saudi citizens abroad, but the crackdown escalated sharply after Prince Mohammed was elevated to crown prince in 2017, a period when he was moving quickly to consolidate power. He pushed aside Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who oversaw the security services, giving the young prince sway over the intelligence agencies.

Since then, Saudi security forces have detained dozens of clerics, intellectuals and activists who were perceived to pose a threat, as well as people who had posted critical or sarcastic comments about the government on Twitter.

“We’ve never seen it on a scale like this,” said Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. analyst now with the Brookings Institution. “A dissident like Jamal Khashoggi in the past wouldn’t have been considered worth the effort.”

Mr. Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and dismembered with a bone saw. Turkey used surveillance video and audio recordings to uncover the crime, identify the team that carried it out and leak their names and photos to the news media.

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Killing Khashoggi: How a Brutal Saudi Hit Job Unfolded

An autopsy expert. A lookalike. A black van. Our video investigation follows the movements of the 15-man Saudi hit team that killed and dismembered the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

There were 15 of them. Most arrived in the dead of night, laid their trap and waited for the target to arrive. That target was Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi critic of his country’s government and its young crown prince. Since his killing in Istanbul, Turkish media has released a steady drip feed of evidence implicating Saudi officials. Weeks of investigation by The Times builds on that evidence and reconstructs what unfolded, hour-by-hour. Our timeline shows the ruthless efficiency of a hit team of experts that seemed specially chosen from Saudi government ministries. Some had links to the crown prince himself. After a series of shifting explanations, Saudi Arabia now denies that this brazen hit job was premeditated. But this reconstruction of the killing, and the botched cover-up, calls their story into serious question. It’s Friday morning, Sept. 28. Khashoggi and his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, are at the local marriage office in Istanbul. In order to marry, he’s told that he needs Saudi paperwork and goes straight to the consulate to arrange it. They tell him to return in a week. It all seems routine, but it’s not. Inside there’s a Saudi spy, Ahmed al-Muzaini, who’s working under diplomatic cover. That very day, he flies off to Riyadh and helps concoct a plan to intercept Khashoggi when he returns to the consulate. Fast-forward to Monday night into Tuesday morning. Saudi agents converge in Istanbul aboard separate flights. Muzaini, the spy, flies back from Riyadh. A commercial flight carries a three-man team that we believe flew from Cairo. Two of the men are security officers and they’ve previously traveled with the crown prince. A private jet flying from Riyadh lands around 3:30 a.m. That plane is often used by the Saudi government, and it’s carrying nine Saudi officials, some who played key roles in Khashoggi’s death. We’ll get to Team 3 later on, and for now focus on these men from Team 2. This is Salah al-Tubaigy, a high-ranking forensics and autopsy expert in the Saudi interior ministry. Turkish officials will later say his role was to dismember Khashoggi’s body. Another is Mustafa al-Madani, a 57-year-old engineer. As we’ll see, it’s no accident that he looks like Khashoggi. And this is Maher Mutreb, the leader of the operation. Our investigation into his past reveals a direct link between Mutreb and the Saudi crown prince. When bin Salman toured a Houston neighborhood earlier this year, we discovered that Mutreb was with him, a glowering figure in the background. We found him again in Boston, at a U.N. meeting in New York, in Madrid and Paris, too. This global tour was all part of a charm offensive by the prince to paint himself as a moderate reformer. Back then, Mutreb was in the royal guard. Now, he would orchestrate Khashoggi’s killing. And his close ties to the crown prince beg the question, just how high up the Saudi chain of command did the plot to kill go? Early Tuesday morning, Khashoggi flies back from a weekend trip to London. He and the Saudis nearly cross paths at the airport. The Saudi teams check into two hotels, which give quick access to the consulate. Khashoggi heads home with his fiancée. He’d just bought an apartment for their new life together. By mid-morning, the Saudis are on the move. Mutreb leaves his hotel three hours before Khashoggi is due at the consulate. The rest of the team isn’t far behind. The building is only a few minutes away on foot, and soon, they’re spotted at this entrance. Mutreb arrives first. Next, we see al-Tubaigy, the autopsy expert. And now al-Madani, the lookalike. The stage is almost set. A diplomatic car pulls out of the consulate driveway and switches places with a van, which backs in. Turkish officials say this van would eventually carry away Khashoggi’s remains. From above, we can see the driveway is covered, hiding any activity around the van from public view. Meanwhile, Khashoggi and his fiancée set out for the consulate, walking hand-in-hand. In their final hour together, they chat about dinner plans and new furniture for their home. At 1:13 p.m., they arrive at the consulate. Khashoggi gives her his cellphones before he enters. He walks into the consulate. It’s the last time we see him. Inside, Khashoggi is brought to the consul general’s office on the second floor. The hit team is waiting in a nearby room. Sources briefed on the evidence, told us Khashoggi quickly comes under attack. He’s dragged to another room and is killed within minutes. Then al-Tubaigy, the autopsy expert, dismembers his body while listening to music. Maher Mutreb makes a phone call to a superior. He says, “Tell your boss,” and “The deed was done.” Outside, the van reportedly carrying Khashoggi’s body pulls out of the side entrance and drives away. At the same time, the Saudis begin trying to cover their tracks. While Khashoggi’s fiancée waits here where she left him, two figures leave from the opposite side. One of them is wearing his clothes. Later, the Saudis would claim that this was Khashoggi. But it’s al-Madani, the engineer, now a body double pretending that the missing journalist left the consulate alive. Yet there’s one glaring flaw: The clothes are the same, but he’s wearing his own sneakers, the ones he walked in with. Meanwhile, the van that’s allegedly carrying Khashoggi’s body makes the two-minute drive from the consulate to the Saudi consul’s residence. There’s several minutes of deliberations but the van eventually pulls into the building’s driveway. Again, it’s hidden from public view. It’s now three hours since Khashoggi was last seen. The body double hails this taxi and continues weaving a false trail through the city. He heads to a popular tourist area and then changes back into his own clothes. Later, we see him joking around in surveillance footage. Over at the airport, more Saudi officials arrive on another flight from Riyadh. They spend just five hours in Istanbul, but we’re not sure where they go. Now we pick up Maher Mutreb again, exiting from the consul’s house. It’s time for them to go. Mutreb and others check out of their hotel and move through airport security. Al-Muzaini, the spy, heads to the airport too. But as they’re leaving Istanbul, Khashoggi’s fiancée is still outside the consulate, pacing in circles. She’ll soon raise the alarm that Khashoggi is missing and she’ll wait for him until midnight. The alarm spreads around the world. Nine days later, the Saudis send another team to Istanbul. They say it’s to investigate what happened. But among them are a toxicologist and a chemist, who also has ties to the hit team. He and Tubaigy attended a forensics graduation days before Khashoggi was killed. Turkish officials later say that this team’s mission was not to investigate, but to cover up the killing. Now the Saudi story has changed, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for several suspects in Khashoggi’s killing. But that doesn’t include Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who many Western government officials are convinced authorized the killing. Khashoggi’s remains still haven’t been found.

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An autopsy expert. A lookalike. A black van. Our video investigation follows the movements of the 15-man Saudi hit team that killed and dismembered the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Mr. Riedel said the team’s sloppiness showed that it was used to operating freely inside the kingdom and not under the watchful eye of an adversary’s intelligence service.

The Rapid Intervention Group was authorized by Prince Mohammed and overseen by Saud al-Qahtani, a top aide whose official job was media czar at the royal court, American officials said. His deputy, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, an intelligence officer who has traveled abroad with the crown prince, led the team in the field.

Another operative on the team was Thaar Ghaleb al-Harbi, a member of the royal guard who was promoted in 2017 for valor during an attack on a palace of Prince Mohammed’s.

Mr. Mutreb and Mr. al-Harbi are on trial in Riyadh for charges connected to Mr. Khashoggi’s death, a Saudi official said, while Mr. Qahtani is under house arrest, has been banned from travel and is under investigation, making it unclear whether the team is still operating.

American intelligence reports did not specify how involved Prince Mohammed was with the group’s work, but said that the operatives saw Mr. al-Qahtani as a “conduit” to the prince.

When Prince Mohammed locked hundreds of princes, businessmen and former officials in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton in 2017 on accusations of corruption, Mr. al-Qahtani and Mr. Mutreb worked in the hotel, helping pressure detainees to sign over assets, according to associates of detainees who saw them.

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The Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh, where Prince Mohammed detained hundreds of princes, businessmen and former officials in 2017 on accusations of corruption.Credit...Tasneem Alsultan for The New York Times

Many of those detained at the Ritz were subject to physical abuse, and one died in custody, according to witnesses. It is not known whether members of the rapid intervention team were involved in the abuse. The Saudi government has denied that any physical abuse took place there.

But it was only after Mr. Khashoggi’s killing that the extent of the team’s work began to emerge. Mr. Mutreb and Mr. al-Harbi were both in the consulate when Mr. Khashoggi was killed, according to Turkish officials. American intelligence about the team’s previous operations informed the assessment by the C.I.A. in November that Prince Mohammed had ordered Mr. Khashoggi’s killing, United States officials said.

The C.I.A. declined to comment.

United States intelligence agencies do not appear to have conclusive proof that Prince Mohammed ordering the killing, but they have pieced together a pattern of similar operations carried out by Saudi operatives under the prince’s authority.

The agencies continue to gather evidence about Prince Mohammed’s role in the operations, and in December the National Security Agency produced a report saying that in 2017, the prince told a top aide that he would use “a bullet” on Mr. Khashoggi if he did not return to the kingdom and end his criticism of the government.

Intelligence analysts concluded that Prince Mohammed may have not spoken literally — that he was not ordering Mr. Khashoggi to be shot — but that he intended to silence the journalist by killing him if the circumstances required it.

The C.I.A. assessment has created tension between American spy agencies and President Trump, who has made warm relations with the Saudis a cornerstone of his foreign policy. The crown prince has been a close ally of the Trump White House, especially Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser. Despite the C.I.A.’s assessment that Prince Mohammed ordered the operation, Mr. Trump has said repeatedly that the evidence was not conclusive.

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Aziza al-Yousef, a computer science professor, driving a car in Riyadh in 2014. She is one of the women’s rights activists who were detained last spring and summer.Credit...Hasan Jamali/Associated Press

The grisly killing of Mr. Khashoggi led to a storm of outrage in foreign capitals and a new scrutiny of the powerful crown prince, who had billed himself as a forward-thinking reformer with a grand vision to modernize the kingdom. But the journalist’s killing was just the latest in a string of clandestine operations against less high-profile Saudis, including members of the royal family.

American intelligence officials said that some of those detained in these operations were held at secret locations, including opulent palaces used by King Salman and his son, until November 2017, when many were moved to the compound surrounding the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton. At the time, the hotel was being used as a five-star jail in the kingdom’s anti-corruption campaign.

That crackdown became a cover for clandestine operations against Saudi dissidents, who were moved into detention in the Ritz at that time, according to American officials.

The Rapid Intervention Group also appears to have been involved in the detention and abuse of about a dozen women’s rights activists, who were detained last spring and summer. The activists, who had campaigned for lifting the kingdom’s ban on driving by women, included several well-known figures: Loujain al-Hathloul, who had been jailed for trying to drive her car into the kingdom from the United Arab Emirates; Aziza al-Yousef, a retired computer science professor; and Eman al-Nafjan, the linguistics lecturer.

At first, the women were not held in a prison, but were detained informally in what appeared to be an unused palace in the Red Sea port city of Jidda, according to Ms. al-Hathloul’s sister, Alia. Each woman was locked in a small room, and the windows were covered. Some of the women were frequently taken downstairs for interrogation, which included beatings, electric shocks, waterboarding and threats of rape and murder.

In an Op-Ed article for The New York Times, Alia al-Hathloul wrote that Mr. al-Qahtani was “present several times” when her sister was tortured, and that he threatened to kill her and throw her body in the sewer.

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Loujain al-Hathloul, who was jailed for trying to drive her car into the kingdom from the United Arab Emirates.Credit...Reuters

The treatment was so harsh that Ms. al-Nafjan tried to commit suicide, according to a United States intelligence assessment.

The women were later moved to the Dhahban Prison in Jidda, where the physical abuse stopped and their relatives were allowed to visit, Ms. al-Hathloul said.

Their trial opened in Riyadh on Wednesday, but journalists and diplomats were not permitted to attend, and the government did not announce the charges against them.

The Saudi official said that Ms. al-Hathloul, Ms. al-Yousef and Ms. al-Nafjan were being tried “in connection with activities that threatened the kingdom’s national security.”

In the kingdom’s effort to forcibly repatriate Saudi citizens living abroad, it was not always clear which operations were carried out by the rapid intervention team and which by other parts of the security services.

At least one Saudi who was detained in the Ritz and accused of corruption, Rami al-Naimi, a son of a former Saudi oil minister, was forcibly repatriated from the United Arab Emirates in November 2017. An associate of a senior member of the royal family, Faisal al-Jarba, was snatched in a midnight raid on an apartment in Jordan last June and returned to Saudi Arabia. His family has struggled to get information on where he is or why he is being held.

In August 2017, a minor prince, Saud bin al-Muntasir bin Saud, was sent back to the kingdom from Morocco. Last May, a university student who had dual Saudi-Qatari citizenship was arrested during a visit to Kuwait and sent home.

Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington, and Ben Hubbard from Beirut, Lebanon.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Saudi Prince Ran Brutal Campaign To Stifle Dissent. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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