Saudi authorities have authorized the use of lethal force to make way for a city of the future that Saudi Arabia is building in the desert with the help of dozens of Western companies, according to a former intelligence officer quoted by the BBC.
Colonel Rabih Alenezi said he was ordered to evacuate members of a tribe in Saudi Arabia to make way for The Line smart city, which is part of the NEOM ecological project.
One of the villagers was shot and killed after opposing the evacuation.
NEOM, Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion green urban region, is part of the Saudi Vision 2030 strategy, through which the Saudis seek to diversify the kingdom’s economy beyond the oil trade.
The most important project is The Line, a car-free city that will be just 200 meters wide but 170 kilometers long – although only 2.4 kilometers is expected to be built by 2030.
Dozens of companies from around the world are involved in the development of the NEOM project. The area where the city will be built has been described as the perfect “blank canvas” by Saudi leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
However, more than 6,000 people have been displaced to allow the project to proceed, according to the Saudi government, and the human rights group ALQST estimates that the real numbers are much higher.
Satellite images of the three demolished villages – al-Khuraybah, Sharma and Gayal – show how all the houses, schools and hospitals were razed to the ground to make way for the NEOM project.
Colonel Alenezi, who has been in exile in Britain since last year, said the evacuation order he had to enforce was for al-Kuraybah, a village 4.5 kilometers south of The Line.
The villages were mostly inhabited by the Huwaitat tribe whose members have lived in the Tabuk region in the northwest of the country for many generations.
Alenezi said the order issued in April 2020 states that Huwaitat is composed of “many rebels” and that “anyone who continues to resist the evacuation should be killed, so he allowed the use of lethal force against anyone who remained in his home.”
Although Alenezi managed to avoid participating in the mission due to medical reasons he invented, the mission was carried out without him.
Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti refused to allow the authorities to assess his property and was shot and killed by them a day later. The man posted several videos on social media protesting the evictions.
Security forces claimed at the time that al-Huwaiti opened fire on them and that they were forced to react in this way. Human rights organizations and the UN said the man was killed only because he resisted the evacuation.
At least 47 other villagers were detained after resisting the evacuation, and many of them were tried for acts of terrorism. Of these, 40 remained in prison, and five of them were sentenced to death, according to ALQST.
Several people were arrested for simply posting images on social media mourning al-Huwaiti’s death.
Saudi authorities say people evicted to make way for The Line project have received compensation, but the amounts paid were far less than promised, according to ALQST.
“NEOM is the centerpiece of Mohamed bin Salman’s ideas. That’s why he’s so brutal in the way he approaches them [membrii tribului] Huwaitat”, explained Alenezi.
A former executive director of NEOM’s ski resort development project said he heard about al-Huwaiti’s killing just weeks before he left the US in 2020 to fulfill his role.
Andy Wirth says he asked his employers several times about the evictions, but never got a satisfactory answer. He left the project after less than a year.
Another executive of a British desalination company, which has pulled out of a $100 million project for The Line in 2022, is also highly critical.
“It might be good for some high-tech people living in that area, but what about the rest?” commented Malcolm Aw, Managing Director of Solar Water PLC.
More than a million people have been displaced to make way for the Jeddah Central project in the western Saudi city, which will see an opera house, a sports district and luxury shops and housing built.
Nader Hijazi grew up in Aziziyah – one of approximately 63 neighborhoods affected by the demolitions. His father’s house was leveled in 2021, having been told he had to move less than a month before the house was destroyed.
Hijazi says the pictures he saw of the neighborhood where he lived shocked him: it looked like a war zone. “They are waging a war against people, a war against our identity.”
Of the 35 people evacuated from Jeddah and contacted by ALQST, none were compensated or given advance warning as required by law. More than half of them said they were threatened with arrest to leave their homes.
Colonel Alenezi now lives in the UK, but still fears for his life. He said an intelligence officer told him he would receive $5 million if he attended a meeting at the Saudi embassy in London with the Saudi interior minister. Alenezi refused.
Journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government who lived in America, was killed by Saudi agents in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. A US intelligence report concluded that Mohammed bin Salman had approved the operation.
“Mohamed bin Salman will not let anything stand in the way of building NEOM… I started to get more and more worried about what I would be asked to do to my people,” Alenezi said.
Editor: Raul Nețoiu
Tags: Killed refused evicted path city future Entire villages wiped map NEOM project
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