Regime Critic Says Saudis Tried to Kidnap Him on U.S. Soil

[Dennis Donovan]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/regime-critic-says-saudis-tried-to-kidnap-him-on-us-soil



Spencer Ackerman
Senior Nat’l Security Correspondent
Published Jan. 23, 2020 7:59PM ET

A suspected agent of the Saudi government attempted to kidnap a regime critic on American soil, according to the critic and multiple U.S. and foreign sources familiar with the episode. The young Saudi man says the FBI saved him from becoming the next Jamal Khashoggi.

Abdulrahman Almutairi is a 27-year-old comedian and former student at the University of San Diego with a big social-media presence. After Almutairi used social media to criticize the powerful Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman over the October 2018 murder and dismemberment of Washington Post contributor Khashoggi, an unidentified Saudi man accompanied Almutairi’s father on a flight to collect Almutairi against his will and bring him back to Saudi Arabia, according to The Daily Beast’s sources.

“If I go back to Saudi Arabia, I’ll be killed in the airport.”
— Abdulrahman Almutairi

“The Saudi government realized I was a threat,” Almutairi told The Daily Beast, revealing for the first time an ordeal that might have culminated in a whole new crisis: the kidnapping and rendition of a Saudi dissenter on American soil. Only timely intervention from the FBI broke up the plot, two sources say.

“If I go back to Saudi Arabia,” Almutairi said, “I’ll be killed in the airport.”

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[dewsgirl]

1. Thank God, it was the FBI agents that are loyal to our country

and not the agents loyal to Trump. Scary.

[Dunnjen]

2. And his dad?

They arrived to take him back, then what?

[rockfordfile]

3. It's time for sanctions on Saudi Arabia. The USA has had enough