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Saudi Hit Squad Was Sent to Toronto to Try to Kill Former Intel Official, Lawsuit Alleges
The Saudi men arrived at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on a fall day.
Among them were DNA forensic experts, a senior military officer and a member of Saudi Arabia’s ministry of foreign affairs.
Holding tourist visas, they approached different customs kiosks. When questioned by border officers, they said they were not together.
In fact, they were a team of mercenaries known as the Tiger Squad — a group allegedly sent by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman just days after the brutal death of prominent Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey.
Their alleged target? Saad Aljabri, a former top Saudi intelligence official who had sought exile in Toronto. They had tracked him to Canada using malware on his phone. They were here to execute him.
This is the extraordinary scene from 2018, seemingly out of a Hollywood spy thriller, that is painted in the allegations of a 100-plus-page lawsuit filed Thursday by Aljabri’s lawyers at U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
None of the allegations have been proven in court.
Even though the alleged murder plot was thwarted after the team members failed to get past suspicious border officers, Aljabri’s life remains today in “dire peril,” the lawsuit asserts.
