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Memoirs of Abdulaziz Khoja… from the Soviet Collapse to Mysterious Murder Attempts in Turkey – Part One

Book cover of Ambassador Abdulaziz Mohieddin Khoja (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Book cover of Ambassador Abdulaziz Mohieddin Khoja (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Memoirs of Abdulaziz Khoja… from the Soviet Collapse to Mysterious Murder Attempts in Turkey – Part One

Book cover of Ambassador Abdulaziz Mohieddin Khoja (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Book cover of Ambassador Abdulaziz Mohieddin Khoja (Asharq Al-Awsat)

In his new book, Abdulaziz Mohieddin Khoja recounts key events that marked his long career in diplomacy, politics and media, during which he took the position of Saudi ambassador to Turkey, Morocco (twice), Russia and Lebanon, before his appointment as Minister of Culture and Information.

The book, published by Jadawel publishing, translation and distribution house in Beirut, unveils secrets of Ambassador Khoja’s diplomatic work and his description of some of the most prominent political leaders whom he met in his journey.

Ahead of the book’s publication, Asharq Al-Awsat brings out in two episodes, parts of Khoja’s memoirs (277 pages).

The first episode talks about Khoja’s diplomatic career in Ankara, which witnessed assassination attempts and bombings against Saudi diplomats; and in Moscow, where he went as the first ambassador of the Kingdom in the Soviet Union, but as soon as he arrived, the entity collapsed, and the army turned against President Mikhail Gorbachev. He returned to Riyadh where his credentials changed, to become the first ambassador to Russia under Boris Yeltsin. Khoja also recounts in his book chapters of his diplomatic career as an ambassador in Morocco.
The second episode reveals details about the ambassador’s mission in Lebanon and his relations with Lebanese leaders, including Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah.

Studies and Early Career

Khoja begins his memoirs talking about growing up in Makkah. As a young man, he moved to Cairo to complete his studies, to which he did not grant much attention.
“Judgment Day came at the end of the year, when the results were announced. They were disappointing. I failed in all subjects!” he recounts.

He then decided to leave Cairo and return to study at the University of Riyadh (King Saud University in Riyadh) and enrolled in the College of Science, Department of Chemistry and Geology. After his graduation, he moved to Britain, where he studied chemistry at the University of Birmingham in 1967.

Khoja talks about his studies at King Saud University. “The name of the university was later changed to ‘University of Riyadh’, and that happened after King Faisal took power, in the year 1384 AH – 1964 A.D. During those years, the capital witnessed great development under the administration of its young prince, Salman bin Abdulaziz… The dreamy, quiet city… soon became a modern, ambitious, and entrenched capital.”

Upon his return to Saudi Arabia from Britain, Khoja noticed the growing Brotherhood activity in the Kingdom. In 1976, he was appointed Undersecretary of the Ministry of Information for Media Affairs, where he worked for eight years under the supervision of Minister Dr. Muhammad Abdo Yamani.

“At that time, we were between the jaws of pliers… the trend of modernity that was at the height of its power, and the reactionary awakening movement at the height of its enthusiasm. We suffered from the contradictory criticisms of the two parties,” the book recounts, as unofficially translated to English by Asharq Al-Awsat.

The Saudi Embassy in Turkey

Khoja left the Ministry of Information after Dr. Yamani was relieved from duties in 1983. Two years later he was appointed ambassador to Turkey.
He moved to Ankara and presented his credentials to President Kenan Evren. The Prime Minister then was Turgut Ozal.
The Saudi ambassador talks about Ozal, who was in office from 1983 to 1989, before assuming the presidency of Turkey: “He was wise, intelligent, open-minded, with Islamic inclinations, and he is the man of economic modernization... Perhaps I would not exaggerate if I said that this man is the second founder of Turkey, after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.”

During his time in Turkey, Saudi diplomats faced assassinations and bombings, as he was personally the target of a failed assassination attempt. But Khoja admits that he does not know who was behind these attacks.
“But my reading of the situation indicates that this has to do with the Iraq-Iran war,” he notes.
The Saudi ambassador talks about his efforts to persuade the Turks of the Saudi position that rejected the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The Saudi Embassy in Moscow

After the liberation of Kuwait, Prince Saud al-Faisal, then Saudi Foreign Minister, informed him in 1991 that King Fahd wanted him to become “our first ambassador to the Soviet Union.”

“As I was preparing to present my credentials to President (Mikhail) Gorbachev, the collapse began with amazing speed. Republics declared independence from the Soviet Union, and others withdrew from the Warsaw Pact. Suddenly, the union collapsed as a pile of paper,” he tells in his book.

As he went back to Riyadh to change his credentials, he was received by Prince Saud Al-Faisal, who shouted at him: “What have you done?!”
Khoja was confused and did not answer. So the prince laughed, saying: “You dismantled the union and came back?”

Thus, he became the first ambassador of Saudi Arabia in Moscow. He stayed with his colleagues in a hotel because there was no Saudi diplomatic mission in Russia. He reveals that Saudi Arabia bought one of the 12 former palaces of hospitality, located on the hills of the capital, overlooking the famous Moscow River, before buying a building near the headquarters of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The Saudi Embassy in Morocco

After Moscow, Khojah moved to work as an ambassador in Morocco (at the beginning of 1996 until 2004).

It was “one of the most beautiful political, cultural and social experience of my life,” he says.

During that period, he met a distinguished king, Hassan II, and after his death, “I worked with King Mohammed VI, who runs his country with full openness and maturity, who loves his people and his people love him.”

His mission in Morocco was marked by the September 11, 2001 attacks.

“One of the repercussions of these events in Morocco was the arrest of an Al-Qaeda cell consisting of three Saudis and others who planned attacks against American and British ships in the Strait of Gibraltar, in addition to targets in Ceuta, Melilla and other Moroccan cities. The cell members were sentenced to 10 years in prison,” he recounts.

“With the approval of King Mohammed VI, I was able to deport the accused to the Kingdom. Those would serve their sentences there and be interrogated again by the Saudi security services.”

After 15 years of absence from the Saudi embassy in Morocco, Khoja found himself returning to it in 2016, upon the orders of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz.

That period witnessed tension on social media in Saudi-Moroccan relations over the Moroccan application to host the World Cup 2026.

He says that some wanted - for purely political reasons - to hold the Kingdom responsible for the event going from Morocco to America, Canada and Mexico.

“This is not true at all,” he notes, “but comments on social media got out of control because of the poisons transmitted by the (Brotherhood) electronic cells, and I found that it is my duty to issue a statement that puts things in perspective.”

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Seif al-Islam al-Gadhafi: Why Shouldn’t I Trust Them?

Seif al-Islam al-Gadhafi speaks during a news conference in Tripoli on Aug. 4, 2010 (EPA)
Seif al-Islam al-Gadhafi speaks during a news conference in Tripoli on Aug. 4, 2010 (EPA)
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Seif al-Islam al-Gadhafi: Why Shouldn’t I Trust Them?

Seif al-Islam al-Gadhafi speaks during a news conference in Tripoli on Aug. 4, 2010 (EPA)
Seif al-Islam al-Gadhafi speaks during a news conference in Tripoli on Aug. 4, 2010 (EPA)

“Why shouldn’t I trust them?” That was Seif al-Islam al-Gadhafi’s blunt reply when asked why he had placed his confidence in Islamist prisoners held in his father’s jails in Libya, men he was negotiating to release.

He then set out, at length, the logic behind his gamble. He said the Islamists had admitted that taking up arms against the Libyan state had been a mistake, and that building “Tomorrow’s Libya” required the participation of all Libyans.

He added that those he had negotiated with and freed had proven worthy of trust and would not return to violence.

Seif spoke during a meeting with him during one of his visits to London in the late 1990s or early 2000s. At the time, he was focused on emptying his father’s prisons of members of Islamist groups, including leaders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

That group had waged a guerrilla war in the mid-1990s to overthrow the regime and had nearly succeeded in assassinating Moammar al-Gadhafi.

Libyan security forces eventually defeated it in the late 1990s. Some of the group’s leaders had been imprisoned in Libya for many years, while others were handed over to al-Gadhafi by the United States during the “war on terror” targeting groups based in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

My question to Seif al-Islam al-Gadhafi about “trust” was rooted in my awareness that there was a current within his father’s regime, which included at least one of his brothers, that was leading a campaign entirely opposed to what Seif was pursuing.

Those holding the opposing view argued that Seif was making a mistake by trusting that those he was releasing would not revolt again when the opportunity arose.

At the time, a senior security official responsible for detaining leaders of the Islamic Fighting Group said, “They will not leave except over my dead body,” in a direct challenge to Seif, believing that the elder al-Gadhafi shared his view rather than that of his son, regarding those the regime referred to as “heretics.”

In any case, Seif’s opponents failed to stop his efforts. Leaders of the Islamic Fighting Group agreed to issue what became known as the “revisions,” in which they declared armed action against ruling regimes in Islamic countries to be forbidden and condemned many practices attributed to al-Qaeda and other groups influenced by its ideology.

Ultimately, it was Moammar al-Gadhafi who settled the matter, siding with what Seif wanted. At the time, Seif was being promoted as a potential successor to his father.

When the February 2011 uprising erupted in Libya, Seif was among those most criticized by people around his father for his “trust in Islamists.” Some of those released were among the first to take up arms and join the rebels.

This, it was said at the time, prompted Seif to adopt a hardline stance against his father’s opponents in his well-known speech at Bab al-Aziziya in Tripoli in the early days of the uprising.

In reality, Seif’s relationship with his brothers had long been the subject of rumors and quiet speculation in the years before the fall of his father’s regime.

Talk circulated of deep disagreements between Seif and his brother Mutassim, who was killed alongside their father in Sirte in 2011. When asked about this, Seif's response suggested a degree of self-assurance.

He spoke with satisfaction about how hard the Americans were trying, but how little they understood about what was really going on between him and his brothers. He did not deny the existence of differences, but his answer suggested that the family ultimately remained united under their father.

Seif was a frequent visitor to London at the time.

He was reaping the results of efforts by Libyan negotiators working to resolve cases in which his father’s regime had been implicated.

These included the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, the bombing of a French UTA airliner in 1989, and the case of the Bulgarian nurses and the Palestinian doctor accused of infecting children at a Benghazi hospital with HIV.

Seif’s efforts succeeded in settling most of those cases, which involved compensation totaling millions of dollars. But his work was bound to collide eventually with the reality that he was trying to present a different image of Libya from the one shaped by his father’s rule.

That was the focus of a question he was asked during a public event before an audience of students at a London college. He replied, “I don’t like this question.”

Features

Who Is Behind the Killing of Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, and Why Now?

11 February 2008, Berlin: Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, son of then Libya's leader Moammar Gadhafi, arrives at the charity gala "Cinema for Peace" at the Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt. (dpa)
11 February 2008, Berlin: Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, son of then Libya's leader Moammar Gadhafi, arrives at the charity gala "Cinema for Peace" at the Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt. (dpa)
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Who Is Behind the Killing of Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, and Why Now?

11 February 2008, Berlin: Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, son of then Libya's leader Moammar Gadhafi, arrives at the charity gala "Cinema for Peace" at the Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt. (dpa)
11 February 2008, Berlin: Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, son of then Libya's leader Moammar Gadhafi, arrives at the charity gala "Cinema for Peace" at the Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt. (dpa)

Seif al-Islam, the son of Libya's slain longtime ruler Moammar al-Gadhafi and once seen by some as his likely heir, has been killed.

Targeted by a warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity, and still a player in Libya's turbulent political scene, the 53-year-old was no stranger to violence.

But his sudden assassination has raised many questions:

- Who is behind it? -

Very little has emerged about the identity or motives of the assailants.

Seif al-Islam's lawyer, Marcel Ceccaldi, told AFP he was killed by an unidentified "four-man commando" who stormed his house on Tuesday afternoon in the city of Zintan, western Libya.

His adviser, Abdullah Othman Abdurrahim, told Libyan media the four unidentified men had stormed the home before "disabling surveillance cameras, then executed him".

Libyan prosecutors said Wednesday they were probing the killing after establishing that "the victim died from wounds by gunfire".

- Why now? -

Claudia Gazzini, a senior Libya analyst at International Crisis Group, described the timing of Seif al-Islam's death as "odd".

"He had been living a relatively quiet life away from the public eye for many years now," she told AFP.

Seif al-Islam had announced his bid to run for president in 2021. Those elections were indefinitely postponed, and he had barely made any major public appearances since.

His whereabouts had been largely unknown. Aside from a small inner circle -- and probably the Libyan authorities -- few people knew he lived in Zintan.

Ceccaldi said "he often moved around" but "had been in Zintan for quite some time".

Anas El Gomati, head of the Tripoli-based Sadeq Institute think tank, said the timing was "stark".

Libya is divided between the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity and its rival administration in the east.

- What Seif al-Islam represented -

Experts differ over the extent of Seif al-Islam's political influence. But there is broad agreement on his symbolic weight as the most prominent remaining figure associated with pre-2011 Libya.

" Seif al-Islam had become a cumbersome actor" in Libyan politics after announcing his bid for office in 2021, said Hasni Abidi, director of the Geneva-based Centre for Studies and Research on the Arab and Mediterranean World.

His killing "benefits all political actors" currently competing for power in the North African country, Abidi said.

For Gomati, his death "eliminates Libya's last viable spoiler to the current power structure".

"He wasn't a democrat or reformer, but he represented an alternative that threatened” current powers, Gomati added. "The pro-Gadhafi nostalgia bloc now has no credible leader."

Libya expert Jalel Harchaoui offered a more cautious assessment, saying Seif al-Islam's death was "no major upheaval".

"He was not at the head of a unified, cohesive bloc exerting real weight in the competition for power, rivalries, or the allocation of territory or wealth," Harchaoui explained.

Still, "he could have played a decisive role under specific circumstances," Harchaoui said, arguing that his mere name on a presidential ballot would have had a substantial impact.

- How has the public reacted? -

Among the public, speculation is rife.

Some have suggested the involvement of a local Zintan-based armed group that may no longer have wanted Seif al-Islam on its territory.

Others suspect foreign forces may have been involved.

"The operation's sophistication -- four operatives, inside access, cameras disabled -- suggests foreign intelligence involvement, not militia action," said Gomati.

 

Features

The Last US-Russian Nuclear Pact Is About to Expire, Ending a Half-Century of Arms Control

This photo released by the US Air Force shows a B-52H Stratofortress approaching a KC-10 Extender for refueling over the Middle East, Sept. 4, 2022. (US Air Force/Staff Sgt. Shannon Bowman, via AP, File)
This photo released by the US Air Force shows a B-52H Stratofortress approaching a KC-10 Extender for refueling over the Middle East, Sept. 4, 2022. (US Air Force/Staff Sgt. Shannon Bowman, via AP, File)
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The Last US-Russian Nuclear Pact Is About to Expire, Ending a Half-Century of Arms Control

This photo released by the US Air Force shows a B-52H Stratofortress approaching a KC-10 Extender for refueling over the Middle East, Sept. 4, 2022. (US Air Force/Staff Sgt. Shannon Bowman, via AP, File)
This photo released by the US Air Force shows a B-52H Stratofortress approaching a KC-10 Extender for refueling over the Middle East, Sept. 4, 2022. (US Air Force/Staff Sgt. Shannon Bowman, via AP, File)

The last remaining nuclear arms pact between Russia and the United States is set to expire Thursday, removing any caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century.

The termination of the New START Treaty would set the stage for what many fear could be an unconstrained nuclear arms race.

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared readiness to stick to the treaty’s limits for another year if Washington follows suit, but President Donald Trump has been noncommittal about extending it.

Trump has repeatedly indicated he would like to keep limits on nuclear weapons and involve China in arms control talks, a White House official who was not authorized to talk publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity said Monday. Trump will make a decision on nuclear arms control “on his own timeline,” the official said.

Beijing has balked at any restrictions on its smaller but growing nuclear arsenal.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday it would be a “more dangerous” world without limits on US and Russian nuclear stockpiles.

Arms control advocates long have voiced concern about the expiration of New START, warning it could lead to a new Russia-US arms race, foment global instability and increase the risk of nuclear conflict.

Failure to agree on keeping the pact’s limits will likely encourage a bigger deployment, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington.

“We’re at the point now where the two sides could, with the expiration of this treaty, for the first time in about 35 years, increase the number of nuclear weapons that are deployed on each side,” Kimball told The Associated Press. “And this would open up the possibility of an unconstrained, dangerous three-way arms race, not just between the US and Russia, but also involving China, which is also increasing its smaller but still deadly nuclear arsenal.”

Kingston Reif of the RAND Corporation, a former US deputy assistant secretary of defense, also warned during an online discussion that “in the absence of the predictability of the treaty, each side could be incentivized to plan for the worst or to increase their deployed arsenals to show toughness and resolve, or to search for negotiating leverage.”

Putin repeatedly has brandished Russia’s nuclear might since sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022, warning Moscow was prepared to use “all means” to protect its security interests. In 2024, he signed a revised nuclear doctrine lowering the threshold for nuclear weapons use.

Signed in 2010 New START, signed in 2010 by US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, restricted each side to no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads on no more than 700 missiles and bombers — deployed and ready for use. It was originally supposed to expire in 2021 but was extended for five more years.

The pact envisioned sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance, although they stopped in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and never resumed.

In February 2023, Putin suspended Moscow’s participation, saying Russia couldn’t allow US inspections of its nuclear sites at a time when Washington and its NATO allies have openly declared Moscow’s defeat in Ukraine as their goal. At the same time, the Kremlin emphasized it wasn’t withdrawing from the pact altogether, pledging to respect its caps on nuclear weapons.

In offering in September to abide by New START’s limits for a year to buy time for both sides to negotiate a successor agreement, Putin said the pact's expiration would be destabilizing and could fuel nuclear proliferation.

Rose Gottemoeller, the chief US negotiator for pact and a former NATO deputy secretary-general, said extending it would have served US interests. “A one-year extension of New START limits would not prejudice any of the vital steps that the United States is taking to respond to the Chinese nuclear buildup,” she told an online discussion last month.

Previous pacts

New START followed a long succession of US-Russian nuclear arms reduction pacts, starting with SALT I in 1972 signed by US President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev — the first attempt to limit their arsenals.

The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty restricted the countries’ missile defense systems until President George W. Bush took the US out of the pact in 2001 despite Moscow’s warnings.

The Kremlin has described Washington’s efforts to build a missile shield as a major threat, arguing it would erode Russia’s nuclear deterrent by giving the US the capability to shoot down its intercontinental ballistic missiles.

As a response to the US missile shield, Putin ordered the development of the Burevestnik nuclear-tipped and nuclear-powered cruise missile and the Poseidon nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered underwater drone. Russia said last year it successfully tested the Poseidon and the Burevestnik and was preparing their deployment.

Also terminated in 2019 was the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which was signed in 1987 and banned land-based missiles with a range between 500-5,500 kilometers (310-3,400 miles). Those missiles were seen as particularly destabilizing because of their short flight time to their targets, leaving only minutes to decide on a retaliatory strike and increasing the threat of a nuclear war on a false warning.

In November 2024 and again last month, Russia attacked Ukraine with a conventional version of its new Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile. Moscow says it has a range of up to 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles), capable of reaching any European target, with either nuclear or conventional warheads.

Trump's ‘Golden Dome’

Without agreements limiting nuclear arsenals, Russia “will promptly and firmly fend off any new threats to our security,” said Medvedev, who had signed the New START treaty and is now deputy head of Putin's Security Council.

“If we are not heard, we act proportionately seeking to restore parity,” he said in recent remarks.

Medvedev specifically mentioned Trump's proposed Golden Dome missile defense system among potentially destabilizing moves, emphasizing a close link between offensive and defensive strategic weapons.

Trump’s plan has worried Russia and China, Kimball said.

“They’re likely going to respond to Golden Dome by building up the number of offensive weapons they have to overwhelm the system and make sure that they have the potential to retaliate with nuclear weapons,” he said, adding that offensive capabilities can be built faster and cheaper than defensive ones.

Trump’s October statement about US intentions to resume nuclear tests for the first time since 1992 also troubled the Kremlin, which last conducted a test in 1990 when the USSR still existed. Putin said Russia will respond in kind if the US resumes tests, which are banned by a global treaty that Moscow and Washington signed.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in November that such tests would not include nuclear explosions.

Kimball said a US resumption of tests “would blow a massive hole in the global system to reduce nuclear risk,” prompting Russia to respond in kind and tempting others, including China and India, to follow suit.

The world was heading toward accelerated strategic competition, he said, with more spending and increasingly unstable relations involving the US, Russia, and China on nuclear matters.

“This marks a potential turning point into a much more dangerous period of global nuclear competition, the likes of which we’ve not seen in our lifetimes,” Kimball added.