THE NEW SAUDI WAR ON DISSENT
ON APRIL 25, TWO MEN FROM THE Norwegian Police Security Service knocked on Iyad el-Baghdadi’s door in the capital, Oslo. The bearded, bespectacled activist is sometimes confused with his political opposite, the ISIS leader of the same name. (His Twitter page announces, NOT THAT BAGHDADI.) But the men at the door were there for a different kind of danger. The officers flashed their badges and got to the point: Baghdadi’s life, they told him, could be at risk. They urged him to come with them right away.
Followed by a second team watching for tails, Baghdadi was driven by the officers to a safe location with an electronically shielded room where the agents told the longtime democracy activist what was going on. In recent months, Baghdadi has continued the fight begun by Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist who was killed and dismembered on Oct. 2 by a hit team from Riyadh. Now the CIA had warned the Norwegians that Baghdadi was in danger, he and officials in Norway and the U.S. tell TIME. “Saudi Arabia wants to stop my work, even if they need to get physical to do it,” Baghdadi says.
He is not alone. In recent weeks, U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement officials have sent out similar warnings to Arab activists in Canada and the U.S., two people who received them and other sources familiar with the matter tell TIME. Dissidents based in Europe, the Middle East and North America are nervously exchanging warnings about hacking attempts—and worse. A troubling picture has emerged:
