Saudi Arabia‘s crown prince wanted to assassinate the late King Abdullah with a “poison ring”, the country’s former top intelligence official has alleged. Saad al-Jabri said Mohammed bin Salman broached the plot in 2014 with his cousin and then interior minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef amid tensions within the ruling family at the time over succession.

Jabri described Salman, Saudi Arabia‘s de facto ruler and the son of King Salman, as a “psychopath, killer, in the Middle East with infinite resources, who poses threat to his people, to the Americans and to the planet”.

“He told him: ‘I want to assassinate King Abdullah. I get a poison ring from Russia. It’s enough for me just to shake hand with him and he will be done,'” Jabri said in an interview with CBS.

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“Whether he’s just bragging… he said that and we took it seriously.”

The matter was settled privately within the royal court, but Jabri said he knew of at least two copies of a secret video recording of the meeting.

Abdullah died at the age of 90 in 2015 and was succeeded by his half-brother Salman, Mohammed bin Salman’s father, who named Mohammed bin Nayef as crown prince.

In 2017, Mohammed bin Nayef was replaced as heir to the throne by Mohammed bin Salman. Nayef was also removed as interior minister and reportedly placed under house arrest before being detained last year.

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Jabri fled to Canada after Mohammed bin Nayef was ousted.

He said in the interview that he was warned by a friend in a Middle Eastern intelligence service that Mohammed bin Salman was sending a hit team to kill him in October 2018, just days after Saudi agents murdered the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey.

He alleged that a six-person team landed at an airport in Ottawa but were deported after customs found they were carrying “suspicious equipment for DNA analysis”.