Qatari support to bin Laden started Saudi rift: former employee

CAIRO – 16 June, 2017: A Qatari opposition figure has claimed the Qatari Emir’s father is really in charge, rather than his son.

Skeikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani is the real ruler of Qatar and not his son Tamim, Qatari opponent Ali al-Dohanem told Emirati Sharjah satellite channel on Thursday.

Dohanem said both Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, who served as prime minister from 2007 to 2013, are ruling the state of Qatar, while Tamim only plays an administrative role.

The Qatari royal family “treats the Qataris as their salves,” said Dohanem, who was a civil servant in the Qatari Intelligence apparatus. He urged the Qatari people to call for a constitution and an elected parliament. “Even dictatorships have parliaments, so why doesn’t Qatar have one?” he asked.

Dohanem also claimed that Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa had direct contact with Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda founder who was killed in 2011.

“In 1986, a private airplane was sent to Sudan to bring Osama bin Laden and his associates to Qatar,” Dohanem said. “Qatar’s Hamad bin Khalifa, Hamad bin Jassim, the Interior Minister and the Intelligence Chief received bin Laden at the airport in Qatar where they had a three-hour meeting. Bin Laden received millions of U.S. dollars and sophisticated American weapons,” he added.

The core problem in the dispute between the state of Qatar and Saudi Arabia was that Qatar funded bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the past, and now the oil-rich state “insists on funding ‘new terrorism’ such as IS, Nussra Front, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and militants in Libya,” added Dohanem.