A Vocal Critic of MBS under Potential Threat from Saudi Arabia, CIA Warns

The CIA has warned Norway that a prominent Arab activist who is living in the country under asylum protection is facing a potential threat from Saudi Arabia, the Guardian has learned.

Ariana News Agency-

The pro-democracy activist, İyad el-Baghdadi, is a vocal critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

El-Baghdadi was alerted to the threat on 25 April, when Norwegian authorities arrived at his doorstep, took him to a secure location, and warned him he was in possible danger from an unspecified threat emanating from the kingdom.

The activist was told the threat had been passed on to Norwegian authorities by a foreign intelligence agency, which the Guardian has confirmed was the CIA.

“The way I understood it was, the Saudis have a crosshairs on me, but there is no idea of what they are going to do,” El-Baghdadi said in a phone interview with the Guardian.

“They assured me that they are taking it very seriously. They came prepared,” he said, noting that authorities had arrived with two squads: one to whisk him away, and another to ensure they were not being followed.

The Guardian contacted the Saudi embassy in Washington for comment on Monday but did not receive a reply before publication.

El-Baghdadi is a Palestinian-born writer who is active on Twitter and gained prominence during the Arab spring, when he began tweeting about the Egyptian uprising.

His English translations of Arabic tweets, and sarcastic takedowns of autocratic leaders, gained him tens of thousands of Twitter followers. He was granted political asylum in Norway in 2015, after his arrest and expulsion from the UAE, which forced him to leave without any formal charges or trial.

Since then, the Saudi crown prince has been a frequent subject of criticism for the writer. Last year, El-Baghdadi warned on Twitter that Prince Mohammed would become more dangerous if he was not held to account by western allies. “If they get away with kidnapping the next step will be assassinations in your capitals, and I’m not joking even a little bit,” he tweeted.

He said the apparent threat meant he was effective: “If they don’t want to kill me than I am not doing my job.”

The move by the CIA to alert Norwegian counterparts does not necessarily mean El-Baghdadi is in imminent and definite danger.

El-Baghdadi said the possibility that the Saudi government was still seeking to silence or curtail activism outside its border underscored a growing issue facing Prince Mohammed, who is known as MBS: the explosion in the number of educated Saudis who are living outside the kingdom and becoming politically active.

“This is shaping up to be a long-term problem for MBS,” he said.

The CIA declined to comment.

The Norwegian police security service, the country’s equivalent of the UK’s MI5, said it was not in a position to comment “on contact we have with individuals, or assessments we do pertaining to individuals’ security”.