JEDDAH — A civil lawsuit filed in a court in the United States this week has revealed chilling details of the involvement of a Qatari royal in wanton killings and vicious crimes. According to the lawsuit, the brother of Qatar's emir — Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani — ordered his staff to kill Americans on US soil and personally beat his chauffeur to death in Qatar, Britain's The Daily Mail reported on Thursday. In the lawsuit, six American former staffers of Sheikh Khalid have claimed that the Qatari royal went on days-long sleepless "binges" and ordered his staff to kill people and threatened to kill his employees. According to the British daily, one of the plaintiffs, Ramez Tohme, the son of Michael Jackson's last manager Tohme Tohme, has alleged in the lawsuit that the Qatari prince threatened to kill him, saying "you can call your father and tell him that you are going to be buried in the desert." Tohme further claims the royal kidnapped him and kept him, prisoner, in Doha for days, attempted to frame him for a crime and had him thrown in jail, The Daily Mail said. Another plaintiff, Terry Hope, who worked for Sheikh Khalid's car racing team, Al Anabi Racing, claimed in the lawsuit that between 2010 and 2012, Sheikh Khalid ordered him to murder his rival, the then owner of the American Drag Racing League and the owner's wife, four times. Hope alleged that in 2016, while working for Sheikh Khalid in Doha, the prince drove out to the desert and beat his chauffeur to death in front of him. "The more that the chauffeur pleaded, the more aggressive the prince beat him." "Plaintiff observed Defendant Khalid to pull out his pistol, grab the chauffeur by the back of the head, and place the pistol in the chauffeur's mouth," the former racing team member claimed The Daily Mail reported citing the lawsuit. "Plaintiff observed Defendant Khalid to then strike chauffeur in the back of the head, observed the chauffeur to fall limp, observed the chauffeur's chest to cease rising, and the chauffeur to eventually become lifeless." The Daily Mail has previously revealed the claims of one of the plaintiffs, ex-US Marine Matthew Pittard, that the royal told him to kill two people, and the Sheikh later threatened to kill him after he refused. Sheikh Khalid hired Pittard, 46, in 2017 as his security director and soon after made the illegal request, the documents claim. "In approximately late September of 2017 and November of 2017, in Los Angeles California, Defendant Khalid asked Pittard to murder a male and female who Defendant Khalid viewed as threats to his social reputation and personal security," the legal filing said. "Pittard refused to execute these unlawful requests." The Sheikh's legal team, lawyers for his US company and the Qatari embassy did not respond to repeated requests for comment, The Daily Mail claimed.
