[ad_1]
WASHINGTON (AP) – Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has asked a federal court in the United States to dismiss a lawsuit accusing him of attempting to assassinate a former intelligence official.
Prince Mohammed’s lawyer told federal court in Washington that Saad Aljabri’s lawsuit filed in August did not provide evidence of the “strike squad” that he said the prince sent to kill him.
Monday’s presentation (December 7) also said that, as the designated heir to the Saudi throne, Prince Mohammed was protected by sovereign immunity laws.
“This court lacks personal jurisdiction over the Crown Prince,” he said.
“The complaint alleges an attempt to kill Aljabri in Canada, directed from Saudi Arabia. None of the rare accusations concerning the United States establishes the contacts between the Crown Prince, the United States and the legal claims of Aljabri.”
Aljabri said that Prince Mohammed sent a “strike squad” to Canada, where he lives in exile, to kill and dismember him in 2018, in the same way that journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in Istanbul in October of that year.
The assassination sparked an international outcry and tarnished the reputation of the oil-rich kingdom and the crown prince.
Aljabri said Prince Mohammed wants him dead because he is close to rival prince and former Saudi security chief, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, and because he has intimate information about Prince Mohammed that would embitter the close relationship between Washington and Riyadh.
Aljabri alleged that the Prince’s personal Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Abdulaziz Foundation was used to plan and recruit participants, dubbed the Tiger Squad, within the United States.
But the plot was allegedly detected and disturbed by Canadian police before they could act.
In four parallel filings earlier this week, the foundation and 11 Saudis named in the lawsuit also requested the dismissal, citing a lack of evidence and jurisdiction.
Aljabri presented the case as a lawsuit for attempted extrajudicial execution under the Law for the Protection of Victims of Torture and requested unspecified personal damages for “serious emotional distress”, anxiety and hypertension, and other ailments, as well as punitive damages .
But the dismissal motions rejected that.
“Aljabri is alive and, according to the complaint itself, he has never even been touched. By its simple terms, the TVPA does not reach an extrajudicial execution attempt,” he said.
He also blamed Aljabri for not pursuing the case in Canada or Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, the prince’s presentation accused Aljabri and his family of participating in the misappropriation and theft of $ 11 billion earmarked for counterterrorism operations when Aljabri was a senior official in the Saudi Interior Ministry in 2001-2015.
“The flaws in this complaint are so glaring and so profound that it can only be viewed as an attempt to divert attention from the plaintiff’s massive robbery,” he said.
“The plaintiff can say what he wants to the newspapers. But this case does not belong to a federal court.”
