Saudi tribe challenges crown prince's plans for tech city

By Frank Gardner
BBC security correspondent
23 April 2020

A Saudi human rights activist living in London alleges that she has received death threats from people she believes are supporters of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Alya Abutayah Alhwaiti told the BBC the threats were made in a phone call and on Twitter after she raised international awareness about a Saudi government plan to evict members of her tribe to make way for a 21st Century high-tech city on the shores of the Red Sea.

"We can get you in London," Ms Alhwaiti said she was warned in the call. "You think you are safe there, but you are not."

Ms Alhwaiti added that she was also threatened with "the same fate that happened to Jamal Khashoggi". She has reported the threats to the British police.

Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and prominent critic of the crown prince, was murdered and dismembered by government agents inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Western intelligence agencies believe his murder was carried out on the prince's orders, which the Saudi government denies.

On 13 April, a man named Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti posted videos online alerting the world that Saudi security forces were trying to evict him and other members of the Huwaitat tribe from their historic homeland in the far north-west of the country to clear the way for a new development called Neom.

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