He ran social media for Saudi Arabia's
crown prince. He masterminded the arrest of hundreds of his
country's elite. He detained a Lebanese prime minister. And,
according to two intelligence sources, he ran journalist Jamal
Khashoggi's brutal killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by
giving orders over Skype.
Saud al-Qahtani, a top aide for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman, is one of the fall guys as Riyadh tries to stem
international outrage at Khashoggi’s death. On Saturday, Saudi
state media said King Salman had sacked Qahtani and four other
officials over the killing carried out by a 15-man hit team.
But Qahtani's influence in the crown prince's entourage has
been so vast over the past three years - his own rise tracking
that of his boss - that it will be hard for Saudi officials to
paint Qahtani as the mastermind of the murder without also
raising questions about the involvement of Prince Mohammed,
according to several sources with links to the royal court.
"This episode won't topple MbS, but it has hit his image
which will take a long time to be repaired if it ever does. The
king is protecting him," one of the sources with ties to the
royal court said.
Qahtani himself once said he would never do anything without
his boss' approval.
"Do you think I make decisions without guidance? I am an
employee and a faithful executor of the orders of my lord the
king and my lord the faithful crown prince," Qahtani tweeted
last summer.
Qahtani did not respond to questions from Reuters. His
biography on Twitter changed in recent days from royal adviser
to chairman of the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity,
Programming and Drones, a role he had held before.
Prince Mohammed had no knowledge of the operation that led
to Khashoggi's death and "certainly did not order a kidnapping
or murder of anybody", a Saudi official said on Saturday.
Officials in Riyadh could not be reached for further comment.
As the crisis has grown over the past three weeks, Saudi
Arabia has changed its tune on Khashoggi's fate, first denying
his death, then saying he died during a brawl at the consulate,
and now attributing the death to a chokehold.
A senior Saudi official told Reuters that the killers had
tried to cover up what happened, contending that the truth was
only now emerging.
The Turks reject that version of the story,
saying they have audio recordings of what happened.
The kingdom has survived other crises in the past year,
including the fallout of the crown prince's short-lived
kidnapping of Lebanese prime minister Saad al-Hariri in 2017.
Hariri, too, was verbally humiliated and beaten, according to
eight Saudi, Arab and Western diplomatic sources. The man
leading that interrogation: Saud al-Qahtani.
France intervened to free Hariri, but Western capitals did
not take Riyadh to task for detaining a head of government - and
Prince Mohammed emerged emboldened, according to these Saudi
sources.
This time is different, with some Western capitals
increasingly critical of the murder and the Saudi explanation.
Germany has announced it will stop arms sales, while
Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement asking for
an "urgent … clarification of exactly what happened Oct 2."
President Donald Trump has swung between saying he is
unhappy with the Saudi investigation but also that he does not
want to jeopardise U.S. arms sales to the country.
SKYPE CALL
To stem the fallout of the Khashoggi killing, the crown
prince, commonly known by his initials MbS, allowed Qahtani to
take the fall, according to one source close to the Saudi royal
court.
A second senior Saudi official said Qahtani had been
detained following his sacking by royal decree, but he continued
to tweet afterwards. The sources with links to the royal court
said he was not believed to be under arrest.
In the Khashoggi killing, Qahtani was present as he has been
in other key moments of MbS's administration. This time, though,
his presence was virtual.
Khashoggi, a U.S.-based Saudi journalist often critical of
Saudi Arabia and its leadership, walked into the Istanbul
consulate at around 1 pm on Oct 2, to pick up some documents
that would allow him to marry.
Turkish security sources say he was immediately seized
inside the consulate by 15 Saudi intelligence operatives who had
flown in on two jets just hours before.
According to one high-ranking Arab source with access to
intelligence and links to members of Saudi Arabia’s royal court,
Qahtani was beamed into a room of the Saudi consulate via Skype.
He began to hurl insults at Khashoggi over the phone.
According to the Arab and Turkish sources, Khashoggi answered
Qahtani’s insults with his own. But he was no match for the
squad, which included top security and intelligence operatives,
some with direct links to the royal court.
A Turkish intelligence source relayed that at one point
Qahtani told his men to dispose of Khashoggi. "Bring me the head
of the dog", the Turkish intelligence source says Qahtani
instructed.
It is not clear if Qahtani watched the entire proceedings,
which the high-ranking Arab source described as a "bungled and
botched operation".
The Arab source and the Turkish intelligence source said the
audio of the Skype call is now in the possession of Turkish
President Tayyip Erdogan. The sources say he is refusing to
release it to the Americans.
Erdogan said on Sunday he would release information about
the Turkish investigation during a weekly speech on Tuesday.
Three Turkish officials reached by Reuters declined to comment
ahead of that speech.
The senior Saudi official who laid out the official version
of events – that Khashoggi had got into a fight – said he had
not heard about Qahtani appearing via Skype, but that the Saudi
investigation was ongoing.
QAHTANI’S RISE
Qahtani, 40, has earned a reputation at home as both a
violent enforcer of princely whims and as a strident
nationalist. In blogs and on social media, some liberal Saudi
journalists and activists dubbed him the Saudi Steve Bannon for
his aggressive manipulation of the news media and
behind-the-scenes strategizing.
Qahtani wrote odes on Twitter to the royal family under the
pen name Dari, which means predator in Arabic. Some of his
opponents on social media call him Dalim, a figure in Arabic
folklore who rose from being a lowly servant to much greater
heights.
According to his biography on his Twitter account, Qahtani
studied law and made the rank of captain in the Saudi air force.
After launching a blog, he caught the eye of Khaled al-Tuwaijri,
the former head of the royal court, who hired him in the early
2000s to run an electronic media army tasked with protecting
Saudi Arabia’s image , according to a source with ties to the
royal court.
Tuwaijri is under house arrest and could not be reached for
comment.
Qahtani rose to further prominence after latching onto
Prince Mohammed, who was part of his father Salman's court as
Riyadh governor, then crown prince and finally king in 2015
Tasked with countering alleged Qatari influence on social
media, Qahtani used Twitter to attack criticism of the kingdom
in general and Prince Mohammed in particular. He also ran a
WhatsApp group with local newspaper editors and prominent
journalists, dictating the royal court’s line.
When Riyadh led an economic boycott against Qatar in June
2017, Qahtani ramped up his attacks on the small Gulf state.
Online, he urged Saudis to tweet the names of anyone showing
sympathy with Qatar under the Arabic hashtag "The Black List".
The high-ranking Arab official and Saudi sources with ties
to the royal court said Qahtani was MbS's "bad cop" late last
year when 200 people, including Saudi princes, ministers and
business tycoons, were detained and put under house arrest at
the Ritz Carlton in an anti-corruption sweep. Qahtani oversaw
some of the interrogations, the Arab official said.
A KIDNAPPING
The extent of Qahtani’s power is perhaps best illustrated by
the kidnapping of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri last
year, several of the Saudi and Arab diplomatic sources said.
The Saudis were incensed at the inability of Hariri, a Sunni
Muslim and a Saudi client, to stand up to their regional rival
Iran and Hezbollah, the Shi'ite paramilitary movement that acts
as Tehran’s spearhead in the region. Hariri belonged to the same
multi-party coalition government as Hezbollah.
The Saudis were particularly dismayed that Hariri had failed
to deliver a message to a top adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to stop interfering in Lebanon and
Yemen. Hariri claimed he had delivered the Saudi message, but an
informer, planted by Qahtani in Hariri's circle, gave the Saudis
the minutes of the meeting which showed that he had not done so.
The Saudis lured Hariri to Riyadh for a meeting with MbS.
Upon his arrival on Nov. 3, 2017, there was no line-up of Saudi
princes or officials, as would typically greet a prime minister
on an official visit. Hariri later received a call that the
meeting with the crown prince would take place the next day at a
royal compound.
When Hariri arrived, he was ushered into a room where
Qahtani was waiting for him with a security team, according to
three Arab sources familiar with the incident. The security team
beat Hariri; Qahtani cursed at him and then forced him to resign
as prime minister in a statement that was broadcast by a
Saudi-owned TV channel.
"He (Qahtani) told him you have no choice but to resign and
read this statement," said one of the sources. "Qahtani oversaw
the interrogation and ill-treatment of Hariri."
Another source said it was the intervention of French
President Emmanuel Macron that secured his release following an
international outcry.
Macron claimed credit in May for ending the crisis, saying
an unscheduled stopover in Riyadh to convince MbS, followed by
an invitation to Hariri to come to France, had been the catalyst
to resolving it. Lebanese officials confirmed to Reuters that
Macron's quick intervention secured Hariri's return.
Saudi officials could not be reached for comment about the
sequence of events or Qahtani's involvement. French officials
declined to comment when asked about Qahtani's role.
AN OFFER TO RETURN HOME
At least three friends of Khashoggi told Reuters that in the
months after the journalist moved to Washington a year ago he
received multiple phone calls from MbS’s right-hand man urging
him to return to Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi had balked, they said,
fearing reprisals for his Washington Post columns and outspoken
views.
Qahtani had tried to reassure the former newspaper editor
that he was still well respected and had offered the journalist
a job as a consultant at the royal court, the friends said.
Khashoggi said that while he found Qahtani gentle and polite
during those conversations, he did not trust him, one close
friend told Reuters. "Jamal told me afterwards, 'he thinks that
I will go back so that he can throw me in jail?"
The second senior Saudi official confirmed that Qahtani had
spoken to Khashoggi about returning home. The ambush in Istanbul
seems to have been another way to get him home.
How much did the crown prince know about his trusted aide’s
plan to abduct Khashoggi?
Most of the 15 hit-man team identified by Turkish and Saudi
authorities worked for the kingdom's security and intelligence
services, military, government ministries, royal court security
and air force. One of them, General Maher Mutreb, a senior
intelligence officer, who is part of the security team of Prince
Mohammed, appeared in photographs with him on official visits
earlier this year to the United States and Europe.
The high-ranking Arab official and the Turkish intelligence
source said it was Mutreb's phone that was used to dial in
Qahtani while Khashoggi was being interrogated.
Reuters tried to contact members of 15-man team but their
phones were either switched off, on voicemail or no longer in
service.
The Saudi official said Deputy Intelligence Chief General
Ahmed al-Asiri put together the 15-man squad from the
intelligence and security forces. Asiri was one of the five
officials dismissed on Saturday.
Another key figure was Dr. Salah al-Tubaigy, a forensic
expert specialised in autopsies attached to the Saudi Ministry
of Interior. His presence – equipped with a bone-saw Turkish
sources say was used to dismember the journalist – is hard to
explain in an operation Saudi officials now say was aimed at
persuading Khashoggi to return home.
It is hard to imagine that the crown prince could have not
known about such a delicate operation, the Saudi sources with
ties to the royal court say.
The Saudi official who spoke on Saturday said an existing
standing order provided authorisation to "negotiate" with
dissidents to return home without requiring approval, but that
the team involved with Khashoggi exceeded that authorisation.
Another Saudi official close to the investigation said that
Qahtani decided on his own to organise Khashoggi’s kidnapping
and that he asked Asiri to get a team together, but that their
plans had gone wrong.
Qahtani's final act may be to serve his boss by assuming the
responsibility for the crisis that has hit Saudi Arabia since
Khashoggi's murder. The Saudi king has sacked Qahtani and
ordered a restructuring of the general intelligence agency.
To head it, he named MbS.