Ex-Saudi spy head denies foreign hand in Faisal's death

ANKARA

A former Saudi intelligence chief has said the assassination of King Faisal was an individual act of vengeance without the involvement of any foreign agency.

In an interview aired on Saudi Rotana Khalijia Channel, Prince Turki Al Faisal said he was tasked by former King Khalid to head the investigation on the assassination.

He said he "held contacts with all the available sources at that time internally and externally".

"The probe that continued for two months concluded that the assassination of King Faisal was an individual act and no foreign party had any links with it,” he said, as quoted by the Saudi Gazette.

King Faisal was shot dead by his nephew Prince Faisal bin Musaid on March 25, 1975 while he was in a meeting with a Kuwaiti delegation in Riyadh, the Kingdom's capital.

The former spy chief confirmed that the motive behind the killing included "both personal as well as King Faisal’s policies."

He also said that King Faisal managed to persuade some Saudi opposition figures residing outside to return to the Kingdom.

Speaking on another issue, he said there was "Saudi-American-Pakistani cooperation to support the Mujahideen [fighters] against the invasion" of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 80s.

He added also that there was a Sudanese offer to extradite Osama bin Laden, former head of al-Qaeda terrorist group.

"In 1995, former Sudanese President Omar Bashir offered to hand over Bin Laden to the Kingdom on the condition that he would not be prosecuted, but the Saudi government rejected it," he said.

“After this I went, carrying a letter from the then Crown Prince Abdullah to Mullah Omar, the Taleban ruler of Afghanistan, seeking extradition of Bin Laden in order to try him in Riyadh but that did not happen,” he added.

He also denied any involvement of the Saudi and American intelligences in creating al-Qaeda.