Why is the Canadian government is staying silent on a Saudi Death Squad which tried to enter Toronto?
Photo Credit: (Middle East Eye / Google Images)
Written by: Daniel Xie
On August 6, 2020 the Globe and Mail reported that on October 15, 2018, Saudi Arabia deployed a hit squad to Canada. Their mission? To kill former intelligence official Saad al-Jabri on the orders of Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman.
Al-Jabri had been living in exile in Toronto since 2017. Previously he had held a senior intelligence post under Mohammed bin Nayef, who was deposed from his position as crown prince on June 21, 2017 in favor of current Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman. Before his ouster al-Jabri was a key point man between Saudi intelligence services and Western agencies, and was credited with preventing various terrorist attacks from occurring on American soil.
According to Tom Parkin on Twitter, the hit squad sent after Saad al-Jabri was intercepted at the Pearson airport. The hit squad, as reported by Trtworld, showed up at the airport equipped with forensic equipment and travelling on tourist visas. Canadian officials were concerned about their behavior when two of the men in the squadwere questioned and claimed not to know anything about each other. After officials found a group photo of the men together they decided to reject entry into Canada for all but one man, who carried a diplomatic passport.
The claims that Saudi Arabia deployed a hit squad onto Canadian soil were alleged to have occurred in a 107-page lawsuit filed by al-Jabri against Crown Prince Salman. In this lawsuit, al-Jabri and his lawyers accused Salman of engaging in covert political scheming to seize power, engaging in various corrupt business dealings, and further claimed that Crown Prince Salman sent his “Tiger Squad” to Canada in order to kill him.
They elaborated that the Tiger Squad had experience with cleaning up crime scenes and thereby leaving no trace that an assassination had been carried out. The complaint by al-Jabri also claimed that the death squad sent to kill him in Canada was the very same squad that killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey on October 2, 2018.
According to al-Jabri’s lawsuit, the “Tiger Squad” was a 50-man death squad composed of various intelligence, military, and forensic operatives recruited from different branches Saudi Arabia’s government with one purpose: to serve the whims of Crown Prince Salman and get rid of his political opponents.
According to al-Jabri’s lawyers in the lawsuit, the reason that Crown Prince Salman wanted Saad al-Jabri dead is due to his close ties with the US government, which could potentially threaten American-Saudi Arabian relations. The 2018 assassination attempt King Salman’s only attempt to purge al-Jabri before he could make any moves threatening Salman’s power and reign as king. According to Trtworld, al-Jabri has received death threats from the king through Whatsapp goading him to come back to Saudi Arabia or face “legal measures” along with “other harmful measures”.
The latest attempt to get al-Jabri to return to be killed was on March 16, 2020, when al-Jabri's children Omar and Sarah were seized from their beds at their father's home in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. They have not been seen since. Al-Jabri claims that they are being used as leverage to goad him into returning to Saudi Arabia so Salman can deal with him.
Though Canadian airport officials prevented the Tiger Squad from assassinating al-Jabri, the Canadian government has yet to condemn the act or even make a comment to the public about the fact that Saudi Arabia attempted to send death squads onto Canadian soil. The only statement from the government came from Bill Blair, who said that they are “aware of incidents in which foreign actors have attempted to monitor, intimidate or threaten Canadians and those living in Canada” but despite awareness of such incidents, can’t “comment on specific allegations currently before the courts”.
Implications
The Trudeau government’s decision to not condemn, or even inform the public of the fact that the Saudi Crown Prince sent death squads onto Canadian soil signifies, as pointed out by Lefty_mind on Twitter, that Canada is willing to maintain their diplomatic ties with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia no matter what. Canadian efforts to maintain ties with Saudi Arabia continue even as the government uses arms and vehicles to both pursue a genocidal war in Yemen and repress people within their own borders.
Even as pressure mounts for the Trudeau government to cut ties with Saudi Arabia, it has maintained the arms trade with Saudi Arabia. On April 9, 2020 the government even lifted its freeze on military exports to Saudi Arabia that was originally put in place in 2018 (which itself did not affect the $14-billion deal with Saudi Arabia to export combat vehicles produced in London, Ontario), as Canada entered lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2018 Global Affairs Canada denied that Canadian weapons were being used by Saudi Arabia for human rights violations.
The Trudeau government’s silence on Saudi Arabia’s actions constitutes a form of manufacturing consent. If we do not get any hint that our foreign policy with regards to Saudi Arabia is wrong, or causes more cons than pros, then we will remain complacent and allow for our positive relationship with Saudi Arabia to continue. The crimes perpetrated by their reactionary government will all be swept under a rug by our own government.
Canada’s support for repressive, reactionary regimes such as Saudi Arabia shatters the illusion of our foreign policy as somehow “feminist” and “progressive”. Our support for the Saudis and other regimes demonstrates that, when push comes to shove, Canada would rather maintain ties with violent regimes worldwide rather than actually work towards being a genuine force of peace in the world. This behaviour may have been what cost us our bid at the UN Security Council,
A constant argument against cutting ties to Saudi Arabia is that if we were to stop weapons productions overnight, then many will lose their jobs across the entire arms industry chain as weapons manufacturing plants start to shut down. This attempt to defend our indefensible foreign policy regarding Saudi Arabia ignores that there is another way of doing things that allows us to cut ties without leaving workers behind.
We can enact policies transitioning those working in weapons factories to rebuild crumbling infrastructure and work in sustainable industries. Those who need training for their new jobs can be given trained and lay the basis for a Green New Deal in Canada. The Canadian government’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak in Canada--albeit under pressure from the NDP and the Greens--demonstrates that the government has the power to solve problems for a large majority of the population. They just choose to instead use this power to defend an indefensible “normalcy” that most of the population does not benefit from.
Conclusion
The Canadian government must end all ties with Saudi Arabia. It cannot continue to obfuscate news of Saudi Arabia’s actions from the public in order to make our ties to a deeply oppressive and reactionary regime palatable. It is high time that Canadians start looking into the facts of our alliance with Saudi Arabia and the implications of continuing that alliance. We must demand that Canada cuts all ties with Saudi Arabia and stands instead with those brutalized by their oppressive regime, be they dissenters of the Saudi Arabian government or the victims of the Saudi war in Yemen.
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