Saudi Is After Dissidents Abroad: Targets in Oslo and London Survived Khashoggi-Style Embassy Traps

A Norwegian website has revealed that the local police was successfully able to protect a political critic of Saudi policies, who resides in the country; saying that a Saudi hit squad had attempted to target him shortly before the well-known murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018.

According to the report published by the Norwegian Dagbladet on the 15th of December, journalist and human rights activist İyad el-Baghdadi was the potential target of an operation that may have aimed to kill him in a similar approach to the one that ended Khashoggi's life in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The report details that the Norwegian ministry of foreign affairs was alarmed after a Saudi request to register 10 visiting Saudi individuals as diplomats during their 2018 visit to the country, saying that the number of people compared to the 18 individuals employed in the Saudi embassy in Oslo suggested an unusual activity that needed the immunity granted by the diplomatic titles requested.

Eventually, Norwegian authorities only registered one of the squad members as a diplomat and he is still working in the Saudi embassy as an Attache.

In May 2019, İyad el-Baghdadi revealed that he had received a CIA warning, citing "a threat from Saudi Arabia." The Arab pro-democracy activist is an asylum seeker in Norway and is known for his vocal critic of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman.

One day after the Dagbladet report on threats that targeted el-Baghdadi, the newspaper published another report about a female jockey who received multiple death threats and was pressured over political views during a visit to the Saudi Embassy in London, during the same year Khashoggi was murdered.

This report cited London-based Alya Al-Huweiti, saying that her anti-regime stances, especially her criticism of the Saudi war in Yemen had urged Saudi diplomats in the country's embassy in London to try and pressure her to tweet in favor of the Saudi government and didn't allow her to leave the building until she had agreed to delete her tweets, a promise she didn't deliver after leaving the embassy.

"The Ambassador tried to persuade me to change what I had tweeted about. I was terrified. They wanted me to support the Yemeni war and stop criticizing the regime. They kept me in there from 14.30 to 17.00; the Embassy itself closed at 15.00. They consistently noted down everything I said. They let me out when I promised to give in and delete my Twitter messages"

Al-Huweiti adds that she used to receive threatening Whatsapp messages, promising to kill her by either throwing acid at her, shooting her or by deliberately hitting her with a car. When these threats didn't result in her backing away from her anti-government stances, Saudi officials tried to tempt her to go back to the country she left in 2011, promising her "a high-paying job, an expensive car and star status in her home country."

These developments come at a time the Saudi Crown Prince faces a number of lawsuits in the US, one filed by a former intelligence general who claims he was targeted in his self-exile in Canada, in addition to another filed by the Lebanese journalist and Aljazeera anchor Ghada Oueiss, who says that the Saudi heir had leaked personal footage of her in an attempt to smear her name.