BBC Report Alleges ‘Lethal Force’ Ordered to Clear Space in Project Connected to Massive Saudi Ski Resort
Trojena is set to become one of the most futuristic and fantastical ski resorts ever conceived and will be a centerpiece in Saudi Arabia’s $500-billion project, Neom. The year-around ski resort will rely on snowmaking machines across its six districts with 450 slope residences, 1,000 hotel rooms, luxury resorts, retail stores, and restaurants. While the massive project has been hailed as a monumental achievement, a new report by the BBC alleges that Saudi forces have been “told to kill” in their efforts to clear land for another Neom project known as “The Line.”
The Line is a 105-mile linear stretch city designed to have no cars, streets, or carbon emissions. While the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has pitched the city as being built on empty land, the BBC details protests by villagers living near the project. Ex-intelligence officer Col Rabih Alenezi says his orders to evict them included permission to use lethal force against anybody who objected.
“The order says whoever continues to resist should be killed,” he says. “It licensed the use of lethal force against whoever stayed in their home.”
Col Alenzi dodged his clearance order and is now living in exile in the UK, but the BBC says the mission resulted in violence.
Specifically, Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti was one of the objectors who wouldn’t allow a land registry committee to value his home in 2020. He shared accounts on social media of his protest to the eviction, saying the villagers were told they would be put in jail if they refused to leave. In one video he uploaded to YouTube at the time, al-Huwaiti said he would not live in any other part of Saudi Arabia because the tribal area he was already living on was his “own homeland.”
He was shot and killed during the clearance and Saudi state security said al-Huwaiti was killed for opening fire on security forces, reportedly labeling him as an “armed terrorist” at the time. The UN has said he was killed for simply resisting the eviction, and the BBC’s reporting now paints a more nuanced picture of his death than the one presented by the Saudi government.
Andy Wirth, the former CEO and President of Palisades Tahoe (formerly Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows) Ski Holdings in California, temporarily served as a senior executive on the Trojena project and was based in Saudi Arabia during his role there. He told the BBC that he had heard about al-Huwaiti’s death before leaving the U.S. for his new role, so he asked his employees about those evictions. He left the company within a year and never received answers that would clear his concerns.
“It just reeked of something terrible [that] had been exacted upon these people,” he says. “It was clearly unnecessary. It was clearly murder. You don’t accelerate human progress at the detriment of other humans. You don’t step on their throats with your boot heels so you can advance. That’s not human progress.”
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