Saudi company that transported assassins to kill Jamal Khashoggi was 'owned by Crown Prince'

A pair of private jets which flew a Saudi hitsquad to Turkey to murder the journalist Jamal Khashoggi were owned by a company that had been seized by Mohammed bin Salman, the Kingdom’s de facto ruler, court documents have alleged.

The court papers, which were first reported by CNN and form part of a civil lawsuit in Canada, say that the ownership of Sky Prime Aviation was transferred to Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund in late 2017.

In October 2018, two Sky Prime Aviation jets carried a team of assassins to Turkey where they killed and dismembered Khashoggi, a critic of the Crown Prince and Washington Post columnist.

The court papers establish an apparent link between the murder and the Crown Prince, who has vehemently denied any role in the killing and says it was a “heinous” crime.

The Kingdom has repeatedly insisted that the killing was instead carried out by a group of rogue Saudi agents.

"He would have been tracking [the company] and would've been aware of how it was used," Dan Hoffman, the former director of the CIA's Middle East Division, told CNN.

"And it's just more potential evidence that he was in the know on this. Which has always been the contention. This is just more evidence of that."

The documents linking the planes to the Crown Prince were filed by a group of Saudi state-owned firms which are suing a former Saudi official, Saad Aljabri, for embezzlement.

Mr Aljabri, in a lawsuit he filed in Washington, has alleged that the Kingdom tried to sent a hit squad to Canada to kill him shortly after the Khashoggi murder.

The Telegraph has approached Saudi authorities for comment.

It came as the United States was due to release a declassified report on the Khashoggi murder which is expected to accuse the Crown Prince of being complicit in his death.