Canada needs to act on Saudis' targeting of dissidents

The release of a CIA report holding Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman responsible for the brutal death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 matters to Canadians, because the same sort of thing can happen here. We've already seen the evidence.

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Phil Gurski is the President and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting Ltd. and Programme Director for the Security, Economics and Technology (SET) hub at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute (PDI). He worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2015, specializing in violent Islamist-inspired homegrown terrorism and radicalisation.

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Canada needs to act on Saudis' targeting of dissidents:

As the Biblical tale goes, Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were there, Cain killed Abel. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” Cain replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

And so unfolded humanity’s first murder, and worst-kept secret, related in Genesis. With only four people on the planet at the time, this was not exactly a whodunit to challenge Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes.

Today’s worst-kept secret is who was behind the brutal murder and assassination of Saudi dissident/journalist/American resident Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018. Khashoggi, you’ll remember, entered the Saudi consulate there on Oct. 2 to get documents for his upcoming marriage, but never came out.

Instead, Khashoggi was killed by Saudi security officials, who had flown to Turkey for that express purpose, and his body was subsequently dismembered. Suspicion immediately fell on Mohammed bin Salman (also known as MBS), Crown Prince and next in line for the Saudi throne. The prince denied any involvement and the Saudi government conveniently found some “rogue” officers to punish.

Now who’s the rogue, MBS?

The U.S. government last week took the extraordinary step of releasing a CIA report written six weeks after the brutal crime, in which the agency stated that MBS “approved” the assassination. Not surprisingly, the Kingdom says the CIA findings do not have any merit.

Many will be skeptical of anything put out by the CIA – or any other intelligence body – but this is huge. A future head of state of a key U.S. ally has been found to have arranged the killing of a U.S. resident/Saudi dissident. This is already leading to awkward questions about the consequences to American-Saudi relations. The timing of this revelation by the Biden administration (Trump had a bizarre lovefest with MBS) is not a coincidence.

Should Canada care? Yes, because MBS, whose initials now stand for “Mr. Bone Saw,” appears to have tried the same tactic here less than two weeks after the Khashoggi slaughter. Former senior Saudi intelligence official Dr. Saad Al Jabry (full disclosure: I met him several times in Riyadh while I was at CSIS) alleges that a similar hit squad was sent to kill him on Oct. 18, 2018. The Saudis deny that too.

Meanwhile, The Toronto Star reported last week that a Saudi PhD student in Montreal, Ahmed Alharby, who had sought asylum in Canada in 2019 and had publicly criticized the Saudi regime on social media, suddenly returned to Saudi Arabia earlier this month, whereupon a new Twitter account was created under his name, featuring a prominent image of MBS.