Saudi authorities have allowed the use of lethal force to clear land where dozens of Western companies are building a futuristic city in the desert, a former intelligence officer told the BBC.
Colonel Rabih Alenezi claims that he was ordered to evict the villagers of a tribe in the Saudi desert where he will pass The Line (the line), part of the Neom ecological project.
One of them was shot dead for protesting against the eviction.
The Saudi government and Neom management declined to comment.
Neom, Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion ecoregion, is part of its Saudi Vision 2030 strategy, which aims to diversify the kingdom’s economy beyond oil.
His emblematic project, The Linehas been presented as a car-free city, just 200 meters wide and 170 km long, although only 2.4 km of the project is expected to be completed by 2030.
Dozens of international companies, several of them British, are involved in the construction of Neom.
The area where Neom is being built has been described as the perfect “blank canvas” by Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. But more than 6,000 people have had to be displaced by the projectaccording to his government, a figure that the UK-based human rights group ALQST estimates is higher.
The BBC has analyzed satellite images of three of the demolished villages: Al Juraiba, Sharma and Gayal. Homes, schools and hospitals have been wiped off the map.
Colonel Alenezi, who went into exile in the United Kingdom last year, assures that the demolition order he had to put in place was for Al Juraiba, 4.5 kilometers south of The Line. The villages were mostly inhabited by the Huwaitat tribe, who have lived in the Tabuk region in the northwest of the country for generations.
According to Alenezi, the April 2020 order assured that Huwaitat was made up of “many rebels” and that “whoever continued to resist [al desalojo] should die, so he authorized the use of lethal force against anyone who stayed in his house.”
He avoided participating in the mission by inventing medical reasons, he told the BBC, but it still went ahead.
One villager, Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, refused to allow a property registration committee to value his property, and was shot dead by Saudi authorities a day later during the expulsion mission. He had previously published several videos on social networks protesting against the evictions.
In a statement, the Saudi intelligence service then alleged that Al Huwaiti had opened fire on security forces and they had been forced to respond. Human rights organizations and the UN have said he was killed simply for resisting the eviction.
The BBC was unable to independently verify Colonel Alenezi’s statements about the use of lethal force.
But a source familiar with the functioning of the Saudi intelligence directorate assured the BBC that the colonel’s testimony – both about how the eviction order was communicated and what it said – corresponded with what they knew about these types of missions.
They also stated that the colonel’s level of seniority would have been appropriate to lead the mission.
At least 47 other residents were detained after resisting evictions, many of whom were prosecuted on terrorism-related charges, according to the UN and ALQST. Of them, 40 remain detained, five of whom are on death row, according to ALQST.
Several were arrested simply for publicly mourning Al Huwaiti’s death on social media, the group said.
Saudi authorities say compensation has been offered to those who have had to move due to the construction of The Line. But the amounts paid have been much lower than what they had promised, according to ALQST.
According to Colonel Alenezi, “(Neom) is the highlight of Mohamed Bin Salman’s ideas. That is why he was so brutal in dealing with the Huwaitat.”
A former senior executive at the Neom ski project told the BBC that he had heard about the murder of Abdul Rahim al Huwaiti a few weeks before he left his country, the United States, to take office in 2020. Andy Wirth He claims that he repeatedly asked his employers about the evictions, but did not receive satisfactory answers.
“It just reeked that something terrible had been imposed on these people… You can’t step on their necks to move forward,” he said.
Wirth left the project less than a year after joining, disenchanted with its management.
The CEO of a British desalination company who pulled out of a US$100 million project to The Line in 2022 It is also very critical.
“It might be good for some high-tech people who live in that area, but what about the rest?” said Malcolm Aw, CEO of Solar Water PLC.
Local people should be seen as a valuable asset given their knowledge of the area, he added.
“We would have to seek that advice to improve, to create, to recreate, without expelling them.”
Displaced residents were very reluctant to comment, fearing that speaking to foreign media could put their detained relatives in greater danger.
But the BBC was able to speak to people who had been evicted from other sites that are also part of the Saudi Vision 2030 plan.
More than a million people have been displaced by the project Central Jeddah in the city of Jeddah in western Saudi Arabia, which will include an opera house, a sports district and high-end residential and commercial units.
Nader Hijazi [nombre ficticio] He grew up in Aziziyah, one of approximately 63 neighborhoods affected by those demolitions. Her father’s house was razed in 2021, for which she received less than a month’s notice.
Hijazi claims that the photos he saw of his old neighborhood were shocking and reminiscent of a war zone.
“They are waging a war against the people, a war against our identity.”
Saudi activists told the BBC that two people were arrested last year in connection with the Jeddah demolitions, one for physically resisting the eviction and the other for posting photos of anti-demolition graffiti on their social media.
The relative of a detainee in the central prison of Dhahban, in Jeddah, claimed to have heard that 15 other people were detained there for allegedly organizing a farewell in one of the neighborhoods that were going to be demolished. Due to the difficulty in contacting those inside Saudi prisons, the BBC has not been able to verify this.
ALQST surveyed 35 people evicted from Jeddah neighborhoods. None of them had obtained compensation or received sufficient notice under local law, they said, and more than half said they had been forced to leave their homes under threat of arrest.
Colonel Alenezi currently resides in the United Kingdom, but still fears for his safety. He claims an intelligence officer told him he would be offered $5 million if he attended a meeting at the Saudi embassy in London with the Saudi interior minister. He said no. We conveyed this accusation to the Saudi government, but they did not respond.
Attacks against critics of the Saudi government living abroad are not without precedent: the most notable was that of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who lived in the United States and who was murdered by Saudi agents inside the consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
A damning US intelligence report concluded Mohamed Bin Salman approved the operation. The crown prince has denied any involvement.
But Colonel Alenezi has no regrets about his decision to disobey orders related to the futuristic city in Saudi Arabia.
“Mohamed Bin Salman will not let anything stand in the way of building Neom… I began to worry more and more about what I might be asked to do to my own people.”
Additional reporting by Erwan Rivault.
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