Citing the memo, a former Saudi official told a report that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, had faked his father’s signature on the royal decree that initiated the kingdom’s quagmired war on Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Saudi Arabia has not yet reacted to an interrogatory sent regarding the comments made by Saad al-Jabri, who in a BBC interview published on Monday accused Riyadh of specific transgressions, although the kingdom has converged that the expatriate is “a disgruntled former government employee.”
They have been in a years-long dispute with the kingdom as his two children have been imprisoned in a case he described as an attempt to lure him back to Saudi Arabia, Al-Jabri, a former Saudi intelligence official who lives in exile in Canada.
The accusations come at a time when Prince Mohammed has become the effective ruler of Saudi Arabia and intervenes in leaders’ meetings on behalf of his 88-year-old father, the King.
His more autocratic personality, especially at the time when he started consolidating power in late 2014 or early 2015 with the start of the Yemen war, also included a crackdown on all sources of potential opposition or power base that could threaten his rule.
As suggested by the provided source from the BBC, when I listened to al-Jabri’s interview on the news, he was told by a ‘credible, reliable’ official, affiliated with the Saudi Interior Ministry, that Prince Mohammed personally signed the royal decree declaring war rather than his father. Al-Jabri further told the BBC: We were surprised that there was a royal decree allowing the ground interventions.
“He even imitated the signature of his dad to get that royal decree,” said the dossier, adding that the king’s mental health was declining. A legal representative of Al-Jabri based in the U.S. did not react to the request of an interview.
The Yemen war against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels that Prince Mohammed launched with words that the conflict was near its end has entered a nearly decade.
