Saudi crown prince launched hidden campaign to silently dissent before Khashoggi killing: report

The Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched a hidden campaign to silently dissent more than a year before the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the New York Times reported Sunday.

US officials with knowledge of classified reports told the Times that the group of operations that killed and deleted Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October conducted several other missions against dissidents.

According to officials, who called the group of the Saudi Rapid Intervention Group, members of the team were involved in at least a dozen operations that began in 2017.

Missions included forced repatriation Saudis from other Arab countries and prisoners and abusers prisoners, Times reported.

A spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington told the times that the Kingdom "claims bad treatment of defendants waiting for trial or prisoners serving their sentences very seriously."

The Saudi government has maintained that Khashoggi's murder was carried out by rogue agents as part of an interrogation. They have said that they are responsible for the incident.

Saudi Arabia who breaks up dissidents is not new, but the effort to make it escalated sharply after Prince Mohammed became crown prince in 201[ads1]7.

"We have never seen it on a scale like this," Bruce Riedel, A former CIA analyst now with the Brookings Institution, Times told. "A dissident like Jamal Khashoggi in the past would not have been worth the effort."