CROWN PRINCE'S OUSTED AIDES
Saudi Arabia yesterday sacked two top aides to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Here are the profiles of the top aides:
AHMAD AL-ASSIRI
Assiri, said to be in his 60s, was a high-ranking advisor close to the royal court and often sat in during Prince Mohammed's closed-door meetings with visiting foreign dignitaries. Prior to his promotion as the deputy head of general intelligence in 2017, Assiri served as the spokesman for the Saudi-led military alliance in Yemen which has been battling Huthi rebels since March 2015. Fluent in French, English and Arabic, the hard-charging official had developed a reputation for hassling journalists whose reports were not to his liking. The Saudi daily Al-Hayat once described the major general, who trained at the renowned French military school Saint-Cyr, as the "best known Saudi pilot in the world". Before his sacking on Saturday, the New York Times reported earlier this week that Saudi Arabia would assign blame for Khashoggi's disappearance on Assiri to help deflect blame from the powerful crown prince.
SAUD AL-QAHTANI
A key counsellor to Prince Mohammed, Qahtani was a media advisor in the royal court. He organised interviews with the prince for foreign journalists and also served as the head of the "Centre for Studies and Media Affairs", a unit operating inside the royal court. Saudi sources say Qahtani, said to be 40-years-old, steered online propaganda campaigns against the kingdom's adversaries such as Qatar and Iran on social media. With 1.3 million Twitter followers, the firebrand official was known for aggressively targeting dissenters and rivals on the platform. Writing for the Washington Post earlier this year, Khashoggi alleged Qahtani maintained a "blacklist" for writers critical of the kingdom and was known to intimidate them. In an off-record interview to Newsweek magazine prior to his death -- which was published yesterday-- Khashoggi described Qahtani and another Saudi top official Turki al-Sheikh as "thuggish". A known loyalist to Saudi rulers, he tweeted last year: "I don't do anything from my own head without an order. I am an employee and executer to my king and my crown prince."
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