AG百家乐在线官网

Journalist Jamal Khashoggi feared Saudi's crown prince would target him two months before he was killed, texts to a fellow exile have revealed.

WhatsApp messages to Omar Abdulaziz, who was granted political asylum in Canada in 2014, show the extent of Mr Khashoggi's fear of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, not just for himself but for all Saudis.

The texts, which Mr Abdulaziz believes were seen by the Saudi government when it hacked their phones in August, show the private angst and worry Mr Khashoggi, who was also living in exile, kept relatively under wraps in his public criticism of the kingdom and its ruler.

Mr Khashoggi was killed in Istanbul's Saudi consulate on 2 October this year, after entering to get documents to marry his Turkish fiancee, with many pointing the finger at the crown prince - something he denies.

In more than 400 messages between October 2017 and August 2018, seen by CNN, the Washington Post journalist talks about the Mr bin Salman being a "beast" and a "'pac man'... the more victims he eats, the more he wants".

"I will not be surprised that the oppression will reach even those who are cheering him, then others and others and so on. God knows," he wrote after a group of female Saudi activists were arrested for campaigning for the right to drive.

He also texted: "He loves force, oppression and needs to show them off, but tyranny has no logic."

Calling the crown prince a tyrant could be considered treason in Saudi, a crime that can be punishable with beheading by sword in public.

The messages show how the two dissidents went from talking about their concerns over MBS to planning a youth digital rebellion to hold the Saudi state to account.

They called it the "cyber bees" and the pair believed using the internet was the only way to rise up against the government.

Mohammed bin Salman: Reformer or tyrant?

Mr Abdulaziz, 27, told CNN: "We have no parliament, we just have Twitter.

"Twitter is the only tool they're using to fight and to spread their rumours.

"We've been attacked, we've been insulted, we'd been threatened so many times, and we decided to do something."

But in August they believed their conversations were intercepted by the Saudi authorities, with Mr Abdulaziz filing a lawsuit on Sunday against an Israeli software company he believes was used to hack his phone with military-grade software.

When the alleged hack happened, Mr Khashoggi wrote to Mr Abdulaziz: "God help us."

Two months later the journalist was dead.

"The hacking of my phone played a major role in what happened to Jamal, I am really sorry to say. The guilt is killing me," Mr Abdulaziz told CNN.

As part of the "cyber bees" initiative, the two exiles were going to send foreign SIM cards to dissidents in Saudi so they could tweet without being traced.

They were also going to send them money, with the journalist pledging $30,000 (£23,400) as he also tried to get rich donors to secretly donate.

When Mr Abdulaziz heard they may have been hacked, he told Mr Khashoggi Saudi officials arrested "a lot of people and raided many places", but that he "bore the brunt of having the group and communication", not the journalist.

A few months before that two Saudi government officials asked to meet Mr Abdulaziz in Montreal, to which he agreed and secretly recorded 10 hours of their conversations in which they said they had been sent by MBS himself.

They told him MBS keeps track of his Twitter feed and offered him a job as "an assurance" from the crown prince.

He was told that MBS's social media enforcer - who was fired and is under investigation in Saudi for allegedly plotting Mr Khashoggi's murder - knew of him.

The men asked Mr Abdulaziz to visit the Saudi embassy in Montreal, and he credits Mr Khashoggi for possibly saving his life.

"He told me not to go and only to meet them in public places," he said.

The journalist, whose body has not been found, failed to listen to his own advice a few months later.