his constant fear of being abducted, the precautions he takes
when venturing outside, and how German law enforcement
officials routinely check on him to make sure he is all right.
Recently, bin Farhan, who rarely grants interviews to West-
ern reporters, had incensed the kingdom’s leaders with his calls
for human rights reforms—an unusual grievance for a Saudi
prince. What’s more, he spoke openly of his desire to establish
a political movement that might eventually install an opposi-
tion leader, upending the kingdom’s dynastic rule.
As we sat over coffee, he relayed a story that at first sounded
innocuous. One day in June 2018, his mother, who lives in Egypt,
called him with what she thought was good news. The Saudi
Embassy in Cairo had contacted her, she said, and had a pro-
posal: The kingdom wanted to mend relations with the prince
and was willing to offer him $5.5 million as a goodwill gesture.
Since bin Farhan was struggling financially (reportedly due, in
part, to a dispute with the ruling family), his mother welcomed
this chance for a reconciliation. But as tempting as the overture
was, he claimed he never considered it seriously. And when
he followed up with Saudi officials, he realized the deal had a
dangerous catch. They had told him he could collect his pay-
ment only if he personally came to a Saudi embassy or consul-
ate. That immediately set off alarm bells. He declined the offer.
Two weeks later, on October 2, 2018, bin Farhan saw a star-
tling news report. Jamal Khashoggi—the Saudi Arabian jour-
nalist and Washington Post columnist who had been writing
articles critical of his homeland and working clandestinely
to undermine some of the government’s social media initia-
tives—had gone to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to pick up
paperwork required for his pending marriage. Minutes after
his arrival—as revealed in leaked audiotape transcripts com-
piled by Turkish authorities—Khashoggi was tortured and
strangled by a Saudi hit squad. His body was then presumably
carved up with a bone saw, the remains later carted away. The
assassination was condemned by nations around the world,
though Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, and others in the
Trump administration are still on close terms with the Saudi
leadership and have continued to conduct “business as usual”
with the kingdom. In June, in fact, President Trump hosted
a breakfast for Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s crown
prince and de facto leader, and at a press session went out of
his way to praise him: “I want to congratulate you. You’ve done
a really spectacular job.”
Among those present at the consulate the day Khashoggi was
killed was Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a close aide to Moham-
med bin Salman, colloquially referred to as M.B.S., who since
2015 has been steadily consolidating power. Mutreb, accord-
ing to the transcripts, made multiple calls during the ordeal,
possibly to Saud al-Qahtani, the kingdom’s cybersecurity chief
and overseer of clandestine digital operations. He may have
even phoned M.B.S. himself, who was singled out this spring
in a scathing U.N. report, which found “credible evidence” that
he was likely complicit in Khashoggi’s “premeditated execu-
tion”—an accusation the country’s minister of state for foreign
affairs called “baseless.” Mutreb—well-known in diplomatic
circles, and one of the advisers who accompanied M.B.S. on his
high-profile visit to the United States last year—gave a particu-
larly chilling sign-off: “Tell yours: The thing is done. It’s done.”
Bin Farhan was dumbstruck as he watched television news
shows and saw surveillance-camera footage of Khashoggi’s
last hours alive. The prince realized all too clearly: By refusing
to go to a Saudi consulate to pick up his payment, he might have
narrowly avoided a similar fate.MONTREALO
mar Abdulaziz, like bin Farhan, is a Saudi dissident. An
activist living in Canada, he had been an associate of
Khashoggi’s. Together, they had planned to publicize the plight
of the kingdom’s political prisoners and tried to sabotage the
Saudis’ online propaganda efforts by sending out anti-govern-
ment videos, mobilizing followers, and divising social media
schemes to counterprogram messages posted by the regime.
Abdulaziz met me in a Montreal hotel where, the previous year,
he had been living in hiding. He recounted aspects of an incident
he had not discussed in great detail before. In May 2018, he said,
two representatives of the royal court had shown up in Canada,
bearing a message from M.B.S. The pair, accompanied by Abdu-
laziz’s younger brother Ahmed, a Saudi resident, arranged a
series of rendezvous in Montreal cafés and public parks. They
encouraged him to stop his activism and return home, urg-
ing him to visit the Saudi Embassy to renew his passport. The
implicit understanding, he told me, was that if he continued with
his political activities, his family might be endangered.
Over the course of their discussions, however, Abdulaziz
became convinced that his brother was under duress fromDÜSSELDORF
PRINCE KHALED BIN FARHAN AL-SAUD
sat in one of the few safe locations he fre-
quents in Düsseldorf and ordered each of
us a cup of coffee. With his close-cropped
goatee and crisp gray suit, he looked surpris-
ingly relaxed for a hunted man. He described