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ISTANBUL – Omar Abdulaziz hit a disc on his phone and slipped it into his chest pocket of his jacket, remembering he took a seat in a Montreal cafe to wait for two men who said they were carrying a personal message of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Upon their arrival, Abdulaziz, a 27-year-old Saudi opposition activist, asked them why they had come to Canada to see him.
"There are two scenarios," said one of the emissaries, speaking of Abdulaziz in the third person. In the first case, he can return home to Saudi Arabia, to his friends and family. In the second: "Omar goes to prison."
What will Omar choose? they asked.
To bring home what was at stake, visitors brought one of Abdulaziz's youngest brothers from Saudi Arabia to the meeting. Abdulaziz called on his brother to remain calm.
The clandestine recordings – more than 10 hours of conversation – were provided to the Washington Post by Abdulaziz, a close associate of the missing Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. They offer a frightening description of how Saudi Arabia is trying to lure opposition figures into the realm with promises of money and security. These efforts have risen sharply since Mohammed became crown prince last year, according to human rights groups.
Several of Khashoggi's friends said senior Saudi officials close to the Crown Prince had contacted him over the last few months, even offering him a high-level position in government service as he returned to the kingdom. He said he did not trust the offer, fearing it would be a trick. According to information from Saudi secret services intercepted by US intelligence, Mohammed ordered an operation to bring Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia at his home in Virginia and then detain him.
Khashoggi has had more news since his visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2nd. Turkish investigators concluded that he had been killed inside the mission and then dismembered. Saudi officials say they have no information about his fate.
Abdulaziz, who has asylum in Canada, said he was working on several projects with Khashoggi that could have given Saudi leaders more reason to want it. Khashoggi had sent him $ 5,000 for a project they called "bees" – an initiative to create an online "army" in Saudi Arabia to challenge pro-government trolls on the Internet. The two men are also working on a short film, a website on human rights and a pro-democracy project, said Abdulaziz.
This job was supposed to be secret. But Abdulaziz said he was the target of Saudi spyware this summer. "They had everything," he said. "They saw the messages between us. They listened to the calls.
In the recording directed by Abdulaziz, the two visitors repeatedly say that they come personally from the Crown Prince. They also mention that they were working on the orders of Saud al-Qahtani, a senior strategist and a law enforcement official for Mohammed.
It was Qahtani that Khashoggi told friends who had called him in the months preceding his death, urging him to end his exile that he had imposed and return to Saudi Arabia.
Abdulaziz left Saudi Arabia in 2009 to study in Canada, he said. He created a Twitter account after the Arab Spring and then, while at McGill University, launched a popular show on YouTube, known for his criticism and satire of Saudi leaders. He was granted permanent resident status in Canada in 2014.
Abdulaziz and Khashoggi formed a friendship after the Saudi journalist moved to Washington in the summer of 2017. "He was alone when he left," Abdulaziz said. "We started talking about life abroad, away from our families, from life and the projects we are going to do. . . . Jamal was a father, a friend. "
"The army of bees" was Abdulaziz's idea, but he said that Khashoggi loved him.
While he criticized Saudi leaders as a columnist contributing to The Post, Khashoggi had met with pro-government Twitter accounts that Saudi activists call "flies."
"Jamal has been so insulted by Saudi robots," Abdulaziz said. "They were focusing on Jamal because he was the voice of Western media."
Abdulaziz said he suggested a counter movement online. He just needed money to get it started. "We call them" the fly army, "he said. "We call ourselves" the army of bees ".
The plan, he said, was to buy SIM cards with Canadian and US numbers that the kingdom's Saudis could use. Twitter accounts need to be checked with a phone number, and activists in Saudi Arabia are afraid to link their Saudi numbers to their Twitter accounts, fearing they will be found and arrested for criticizing the government, he said. They had already allocated 200 SIM cards to users.
Khashoggi also asked Abdulaziz to help him in a short film showing how the Saudi rulers were dividing the country, he said. And Khashoggi asked for help to design a logo for a new foundation he was training – Democracy for Arab World Now. Abdulaziz also helped design a website to track human rights issues.
But Khashoggi was particularly worried about the SIM card project. "He told me that this project was too dangerous," Abdulaziz said. "He told me to be careful. . . . Twitter is the only platform we have, we do not have a parliament. "
In a June 21 message, Khashoggi wrote to Abdulaziz: "I will try to recover the money. . . . We should do something. You know that sometimes I am [affected] by their attacks. "
Two days later, Abdulaziz placed an order on Amazon. He clicked on a link sent to his phone to track the delivery of a parcel. He suspects that the action has infected his phone.
The Citizen Lab, a project of the University of Toronto that studies digital espionage against civil society, warned him that his phone would have been hacked. Two weeks ago, the group concluded with "a high degree of confidence" that their mobile phone had been targeted. The group said it believed the operator was linked to Saudi Arabia's "government and security services."
Abdulaziz said one of the men had made arrangements to bring him back to Saudi Arabia for several months. If the man had a message, he could bring it to Canada, remembers Abdulaziz.
He could have a fresh start in Saudi Arabia, they said. He said that he was coming and had set up a WhatsApp group called "New Era" on March 30, a screen capture shows.
At the time, the 32-year-old Crown Prince was very public. He had just completed a prestigious visit to the United States, where he met celebrities such as Bill Gates, the owner of the Post, Jeffrey P. Bezos and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
But a shiver had already been made on the Saudi dissident community. In Saudi Arabia, the prince arrested militants, arrested businessmen and imprisoned them at the Ritz Carlton.
Activists outside the country were also not safe. Loujain al-Hathoul, one of Saudi Arabia's most famous activists, was kidnapped on the street in Abu Dhabi and taken to Saudi Arabia. She was released after a few days in detention but was banned from traveling and asked not to speak in public. She was subsequently arrested on charges including contact with "foreign entities". She stays in prison.
Prince Khaled bin Farhan al-Saud, a royal dissident in Germany, said he had been the subject of a similar plot, he said, in September. He added that his relatives told him that he would receive a check from the state to help him overcome his financial difficulties if he went to Cairo. He says he has not left Germany for seven years for fear of being kidnapped.
"Saudi Arabia is sending a very deliberate and clear message, stating that you will never be free," said Human Rights Watch Executive Director Sarah Leah Whitson. "Wherever you are, you will never be free to say what you want."
Khashoggi had advised Abdulaziz to make sure to meet men in public places and never return to the kingdom with them. "He said," If you want to take money, it's your decision, "recalls Abdulaziz. "But do not go back; do not trust them.
As the two Saudi visitors showed up in front of Omar at the May 15 meeting at Café Juliette et Chocolat in Montreal, Neil Diamond's song "Sweet Caroline" was playing in the background.
Khashoggi has "a headache," said one of the men, but he plans to return to Saudi Arabia. Abdulaziz should too.
"Omar, to deal with you, we did not want to come from a minister or an ambassador. We wanted to come from the top of the pyramid, the prince, "said one of the men. "No one can treat this subject better than the prince himself."
La Poste listened to more than 10 hours of recordings provided by Abdulaziz, who, he said, were recorded at meetings he had with the men during the four days of May. The data in the file shows that the recordings were made at the specified times. The contemporary WhatsApp messages on the tour are also consistent with its history. Abdulaziz asked that men not be identified. He said that he did not know whether they were working for Saudi intelligence or whether they had been forced by the government to try to bring him back. The two men, who are public figures who expressed their support for the crown prince, did not answer the calls or answer the questions sent by The Post on Wednesday. One of them said that he would send an answer but did not do it. Calls to a spokesman for the Saudi Foreign Ministry have remained unanswered.
The tone of much of the conversation is jovial and friendly.
"They started with the carrots," he explained. "Trying to convince me to go home, bringing my brother."
He said that he believed at the time that they wanted to bring him back to the kingdom, pay him and use his many social media for Saudi propaganda. At one point in the conversation, the men urged him to go to the Saudi Embassy to retrieve a new passport – a claim that he now regards as potentially sinister since Khashoggi disappeared in the consulate of Istanbul.
On the caramel coffees, the two men explain the options.
In a scenario where Abdulaziz will return to Saudi Arabia, it's a win-win situation, said one man.
"Omar is a beneficiary or a winner because he goes home," he says. "The second part, the state, is a winner and is happy too."
His return could help to refine the image of the kingdom, they said. The government had already spent millions of dollars during the crown prince's visit to Washington to improve it. "It shows that the kingdom is ready to take such a step," he says.
But in the second scenario, everyone loses, continued the man.
"Omar is a loser because he's going to go to jail," he said, adding that he would be "taken to the airport". The government would also lose. Since Abdulaziz is not an important figure in the opposition, any "information" obtained from him if he was detained "would not serve the state much." But the "propaganda" of human rights groups and media covering his detention, they said.
At times, the conversation is about the amount of money that Abdulaziz could be paid for if he accepted their offer. He says Saudi Arabia owes him $ 412,000 for cutting government tuition payments for his scholarship.
"I will take the money. I will give it to the homeless in Montreal, give it to the cancer hospital or buy a new watch and break it, "he said at another meeting. "This is not the case of anyone."
During the talks, he remained in contact with Yahya Assiri, a Saudi human rights activist in London.
"I did not stop asking him," Do you want something? Do you want to find a compromise with them? Assiri said. He said, "No, no, no, I want to see what they want from me. "In my opinion, it was clear what they wanted, they wanted him to come back, get rid of his work and shut him up.
Abdulaziz said that he had never intended to go back. The men said they would not transfer money before his return. He refused the offer and the men finally left Montreal without him.
In early August, the two younger brothers of Abdulaziz were arrested in Saudi Arabia, with a group of eight of his friends, he said, stopping to restrain his tears.
He sent a message to one of the men who visited him in May.
"I understand that you are a middle man," he said, according to the screenshots of the message. "Ask them their requests."
The answer came back and referred to "bees". "The group talked a lot about social media accounts. And they know you have them.
But Abdelaziz said he could not give in. "They hacked my phone and imprisoned my brothers, were kidnapped and may have killed my friend," he said. "I will not stop myself."
Read more
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After the journalist's disappearance, we focus on the dark and intimidating side of the young prince
A Khashoggi mystery highlights a Saudi official called the strategist and enforcer of the Crown Prince
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