British Intelligence Officers Training Crown Prince's Spies to Halt Failures: What's the Story?
In a move causing concern for various parties, Intelligence Online has unveiled the existence of a new Saudi spy school that is siphoning off the expertise of British intelligence.
On July 18, 2023, the magazine revealed that an increasing number of British intelligence officers were involved in developing an extremely secretive spy school under the auspices of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
It noted that this development has become a source of worry and apprehension among intelligence experts regarding the migration of intelligence expertise that has been trained in Britain over the years to the Gulf state, where financial resources are abundant.
A Secret School
Riyadh has indeed been enhancing its high-level intelligence training program with the assistance of a number of British intelligence officers, The Intelligence Online found.
The Kingdom aims to optimize the deployment of human intelligence resources, knowing how to effectively manage and utilize them.
The British officers engaged in the project are from the Defence HUMINT Unit (DHU), a highly secretive intelligence unit specialized in recruiting human sources.
The Intelligence Online explained that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman provides exceptionally generous salaries to the British trainers.
This is to the extent that British intelligence officers have strongly sought to offer their services as trainers, which has begun to pose a challenge for the Human Resources Department within the DHU.
The training at the new Saudi intelligence school is linked to the National Military Academy.
The Academy was established by bin Salman to train senior officers and seasoned defense experts as part of a campaign for self-reliance within the armed forces and the intelligence sector, both of which employ numerous foreign advisors.
They have relied on officers from the British DHU in various aspects of espionage.
Multiple Roles
The Defence HUMINT Unit (DHU), which Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman relies on to establish his new spy school, is one of the most significant units of the British Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6.
Established on April 1, 1964, under the supervision of General Sir Kenneth Strong, its primary mission was to focus on Cold War issues (spanning from 1947 to 1991) between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their allies.
The current head of Defence Intelligence is Lieutenant General James Hockenhull, who has been leading it since 2018. Its operational strategy involves tracking foreign military operations, monitoring activities related to weapons of mass destruction, and countering international terrorism.
The unit’s chief is a three-star military officer who is responsible for the overall coordination of defense intelligence activities across all branches of the armed forces.
Supporting the chief are two deputies, one civilian and the other military. The responsibility of the civilian Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence is to produce and analyze information.
As for the military Director of Cyber Intelligence and Information Integration, their responsibilities encompass the digital intelligence sector and information integration.
According to the official website of the British government, the DHU relies on secret information provided by government communications offices, the British intelligence agency, security services, allied intelligence services, and military asset groups for its intelligence assessments.
In addition to diplomatic reports, a broad range of publicly available information or open sources, such as media reports and the Internet, are used.
The website mentioned that the unit has played various external roles by providing tactical, operational, and strategic-level analyses.
One notable example of the support provided by Defence Intelligence was its role in providing continuous information to the military coalition in Iraq.
Additionally, it supported NATO forces in regions like Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia.
It also aided United Nations operations in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cyprus, Eritrea, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Numerous Failures
Therefore, Mohammed bin Salman specifically chose officers from that unit as part of his effort to establish an intelligence school and develop the Saudi intelligence sector following a series of failures, notably what is known as the “Denmark Scandal.”
On April 15, 2021, the Danish prosecutor announced the indictment of three men from the Iranian opposition group ASMLA, or Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz, residing in Denmark, for financing terrorism and promoting it inside Iran in collaboration with the Saudi intelligence agency.
The statement said, “The three accused men financed terrorism in cooperation with Saudi intelligence, carrying out unlawful intelligence activities in Denmark.”
The crisis dates back to 2018 when the Danish intelligence agency (PET) protected three members of the opposition movement south of Copenhagen from Iranian intelligence agents who arrested one of them on an attempted assassination charge.
However, as investigations began, it became clear that the members of the Ahwaz opposition movement had fallen into intelligence traps and attempted to incite turmoil within the country. They were immediately arrested and subjected to extensive interrogations.
Here, the investigations revealed a new dimension, expanding the list of accusations. Riyadh’s involvement in financially supporting the movement became evident.
It was revealed that the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency transferred sums exceeding 30 million dollars through its network of connections in Denmark to the Ahwaz group, which it continuously employed in terrorist activities.
Based on this, the Roskilde Court (south of Copenhagen) extended the detention of the accused, relying on substantial evidence of the role of Saudi intelligence in providing financial and logistical support to the Arab Struggle Movement.
The actions of the Saudi intelligence caused tension in relations with Denmark. The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Saudi ambassador to Copenhagen (his name was not disclosed at the time) in June 2021 in light of accusations of supporting the separatist movement based in the Scandinavian country and directly inciting terrorism in Iran.
Khashoggi Case
However, the most significant stain on Saudi intelligence remains the gruesome killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside his country’s consulate in Istanbul, which captured global attention.
At the time, the General Intelligence sought to overcome the scandal of its involvement in Khashoggi’s assassination in early October 2018, especially since Major General Ahmad Asiri, then the Deputy Head of Intelligence, played a central role in the operation.
The Director of Intelligence, Khalid al-Humaidan, himself was just steps away from being dismissed if not for the personal will of the Saudi Crown Prince, who chose to retain him for undisclosed reasons.
The murder was ordered by Mohammed bin Salman according to the assessment of the report from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which also revealed that the execution team was dispatched by Asiri, the then Deputy Head of Saudi Intelligence, to Istanbul to eliminate Khashoggi.
There, Khashoggi was forcefully bound after a struggle and injected with a significant amount of drugs before they dismembered his body and handed it over to a local “collaborator” outside the consulate for disposal.
This unaccounted-for strike led to the removal of Ahmad Asiri and significant changes in the General Intelligence Directorate.
This unplanned operation strained Saudi relations with many countries and reached abysmal levels, tarnishing Riyadh’s reputation and that of Mohammed bin Salman on the global stage.
The Danger Lurking
The Saudi-British intelligence collaboration, along with the involvement of the Defence HUMINT Unit, represents a new phase in the world of espionage, carrying with it a disregard for the Kingdom’s dark human rights records and the mechanisms of spying and targeting dissidents.
For example, on January 23, 2020, Le Monde reported that the revelation of Saudi Arabia’s intrusion into the personal phone of Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and CEO who also happens to own The Washington Post, was nothing short of an astonishing tale of espionage.
According to Le Monde, the breach of Bezos’s device resulted in the exposure of private photographs of the billionaire and proprietor of the daily newspaper, where Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, renowned for his outspoken critics of Riyadh, was a contributor.
The French newspaper also noted that the conclusions of the technical analysis conducted in 2019 on Bezos’s iPhone revealed an exchange of phone numbers between the Crown Prince and the CEO of Amazon in the month preceding the digital intrusion in May 2018.
As for the spying techniques used by the Saudi intelligence agency, it relies on more than one entity, not limited to the United States alone.
On December 4, 2018, the Saudi opposition figure Omar Abdulaziz, residing in Canada, filed a lawsuit against an Israeli company claiming it assisted the Saudi government in wiretapping and espionage against him, as well as monitoring messages he exchanged with Khashoggi.
In a tweet, the Saudi dissident said Saudi Arabia paid over 55 million dollars to an Israeli company for spying on him and other activists, and today, he is suing them in court.
The New York Times reported this lawsuit is an additional step against the NSO Group company and the Israeli government that granted licenses for the sale of malicious software known as Pegasus to foreign governments.
Just a few months before, Mohammed bin Salman launched a wide-ranging campaign of arrests that included hundreds of princes and businessmen; the company offered the Saudi intelligence programs for hacking mobile phones, according to the newspaper.
