A source in Saudi Arabia claimed that Saudi princes and businessmen, who were arrested in a probe earlier this month and are being held at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh, are being tortured by private U.S. security contractors.
The source, who spoke to the Daily Mail, said Academi, formerly known as Blackwater, was responsible for the interrogations and torture. Academi is an American private military company whose clients include the U.S. federal government on a contractual basis, and has denied the claims.
The Saudi crackdown was ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and among those arrested is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who is the Saudi King’s nephew with a fortune over $17 billion.
Prince Talal, who has stakes in Twitter, Lyft and Citigroup, was hung upside down to “send a message.”
“They are beating them, torturing them, slapping them, insulting them. They want to break them down," in order to uncover an alleged network of foreign officials who have taken bribes from Saudi princes, the source told DailyMail.com.
“All the guards in charge are private security because MBS [Mohammed Bin Salman] doesn't want Saudi officers there who have been saluting those detainees all their lives,” the source added.
Salman conducts some of the interrogations himself. “When it's something big he asks them questions. He speaks to them very nicely in the interrogation, and then he leaves the room, and the mercenaries go in. The prisoners are slapped, insulted, hung up, tortured,” the source said.
The crown prince has confiscated over $194 billion from the accounts and assets of those arrested. Saudi authorities arrested a number of high-profile figures, including princes and current and former cabinet ministers, for alleged corruption. Eleven princes, four sitting cabinet members and dozens of former government ministers were among those detained.
The company supplying the contractors received widespread backlash when some of its employees were convicted in 2007 of slaughtering 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. Four guards were found guilty of murder in a U.S. court.
