A former colonel in the Saudi military and ex-intelligence officer told the BBC on the record Wednesday that the Saudi government ordered troops to kill indigenous people who resisted eviction on the land that Riyadh hopes to turn into the state-of-the-art “megacity” Neom.
Neom is believed to be the brainchild of the de facto ruler of the country, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has stated in interviews that Neom aspires to “compete with Miami” to host international music festivals, sporting tournaments, and offer unique luxury resort options to the world’s wealthiest people. The Saudi government also hopes to house as many as 5 million people in Neom, in “green” facilities where government-controlled trains will be the only legal transport and fossil fuels will play a minimum role.
The site where construction on Neom is currently ongoing is in northwestern Saudi Arabia, close to the northernmost tip of the Red Sea in Tabuk province. Mohammed bin Salman, commonly known by his initials MBS, has claimed the desert landscape there is “empty” so the Saudi government can construct an entirely new city with minimal disruption to locals. In reality, however, the land is populated by members of the ancient, often nomadic Huwaitat tribe. As many as 20,000 Huwaitat people could ultimately be forced off of their land by the Neom project. The BBC noted on Wednesday that the Saudi government itself estimates it has displaced about 6,000 people from the area.
“For the Huwaitat tribe, Neom is being built on our blood, on our bones,” Huwaitat activist Alia Hayel Aboutiyah al-Huwaiti told the Guardian in 2020. “It’s definitely not for the people already living there! It’s for tourists, people with money. But not for the original people living there.”
Col. Rabih Alenezi told the BBC in a report published on Wednesday that Saudi military authorities put him in charge of evicting Huwaitat people on land designated for Neom in 2020. In April of that year, Alenezi said he received an order to remove the people of the village of al-Khuraybah, which described them as “rebels.”
“Whoever continues to resist [eviction] should be killed, so it licensed the use of lethal force against whoever stayed in their home,” Alenezi recalled the order commanding.
The former colonel is now in exile in the United Kingdom, where he spoke to the national broadcaster. Al-Khuraybah, the BBC noted, appears to no longer exist, according to satellite images. Alenezi’s claim that he was told to order the killing of those who resist also aligns with reports of violent removal of Huwaitat people at the time. At least one killing of a tribe member by Saudi forces was documented at the time: that of Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, who had attempted to organize Huwaitat locals against the Saudi government to prevent the Neom displacements.
Huwaiti was shot dead in his home in 2020, allegedly after refusing an official delegation sent to evaluate his property. Shortly before his death, Huwaiti published several videos on Youtube denouncing the displacements.
“They have begun the process of removing people, beginning with surveying homes with the intent of removing people and deporting them from their land,” he narrated, according to a translation by the Guardian at the time. “They arrested anyone who said they’re against deportation, they don’t want to leave, they want to remain [in] their homes, that they don’t want money.”
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Saudi authorities responded to the outcry following Huwaiti’s death by claiming that he had violently engaged officers, leaving them no option but to shoot him.
Human rights groups and experts affiliated with the United Nations estimate that about 40 other people were arrested for resisting displacement, including several currently on death row. A group of U.N. experts published a report in May 2023 urging the Saudi government to free time.
“Despite being charged with terrorism, they were reportedly arrested for resisting forced evictions in the name of the NEOM project and the construction of a 170km linear city called The Line,” the letter by the experts read. “Under international law, States that have not yet abolished the death penalty may only impose it for the ‘most serious crimes’, involving intentional killing. We do not believe the actions in question meet this threshold.”
The BBC noted that it could not independently verify that Alenezi and other Saudi officials had received orders to kill resisting locals for Neom, and the Saudi government refused to comment on the story. It did note that the claim aligned with the timing of Huwaiti’s death and at least one anonymous source corroborated the order to kill.
Another person consulted for the story – Andy Wirth, who worked on a proposed ski resort at Neom for five months in 2020 – said he had expressed concern about the evictions during his time there but did not receive any clear answers.
“It just reeked of something terrible [that] had been exacted upon these people… You don’t step on their throats with your boot heels so you can advance,” he told the BBC.
Wirth has been one of the most vocal on-the-record critics of the Neom project since he left it. In 2022, Wirth lamented that Saudi officials wanted him to use explosives to carve an artificial lake into the land, creating what he called a “massive open-pit mine” that alarmed him.
“We were hanging buildings on the side of cliffs, and we didn’t even know the geology,” Wirth said at the time, speaking to Bloomberg for an extensive article on the challenges facing MBS’s signature project. Wirth went on to describe the project as suffering from “the complete absence of being tethered to reality, objectively.”
Two years later, in addition to widespread human rights concerns, Neom appears to be struggling to reach its ambitious goals in a timely manner. While many of Neom’s proposed facilities are sporting and concert venues, luxury beach resorts, or tech innovation offices, the most well-known of the sites is “The Line,” a proposed skyscraper that Saudi officials claim will one day house 1.5 million people. The Line is designed to be a silver, 106-mile long building with its own internal commuter rail system and entire walkable neighborhoods within, all running on “green” technology.
In April, Bloomberg reported citing anonymous sources that Neom planners had dramatically cut their expectations for progress on the Line, predicting that 300,000 people will live in The Line by 2030, not 1.5 million people.
“Officials have long said The Line would be built in stages and they expect it to ultimately cover a 170-kilometer stretch of desert along the coast. With the latest pullback, though, officials expect to have just 2.4 kilometers of the project completed by 2030,” Bloomberg claimed at the time.
Neom planners have largely disregarded concerns that the project is too expensive and faces too many real-world challenges. MBS himself called building Neom “very do-able” in an interview with the Discovery Channel in June. Neom officials have denied any struggles with financing or designing buildable facilities.
On Wednesday, Neom announced the debut of yet another neighborhood in the future city, “Jaumur, the largest cosmopolitan luxury community set on the coast of Gulf of Aqaba.”
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Jaumur will allegedly house 6,000 people and include “500 marina apartments and nearly 700 luxury villas, with waterfront access,” as well as a world-class marine biology and oceanography research facility.
