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New details emerge on Qatari Sheikh who ordered aide to murder two people
An American who worked as the US security chief for Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al-Thani, brother of the Emir of Qatar, revealed more details of the lawsuit accusing the royal of ordering him to murder two people.
In an interview with ABC Action News, Matthew Pittard, who worked as a personal bodyguard for the Sheikh and is now suing him, said that he was enlisted to kill a man who tried to collect a debt of $6,000, to which he refused and instead paid the debt off himself.
He also said that he was told to shoot a woman and “bury her in the desert,” because the Sheikh believed she was texting a man from another Middle Eastern country.
The lawsuit against the Qatari royal was filed on July 23 in a US federal court.
While in Qatar, Pittard said he discovered that the Sheikh had an American citizen locked up at one of his properties, whom he was able to aid with the help of the US embassy.
However, according to Pittard, when Sheikh Khalid found out, he held him prisoner and threatened to kill him and his family, and subsequently forced him to sign a non-disclosure agreement while holding him at gun-point.
Pittard also revealed that he once had to administer Narcan to the Sheikh, a drug used to treat heroin overdoses, after he “OD’ed and hit the floor” at a party.
A second plaintiff Matthew Allende, who worked as a medic for the billionaire, told ABC Action News that he sometimes had to stay up for “20, 24, 36 hours straight” to watch the Sheikh while he partied, to make sure that he didn’t stop breathing.
He also added that although he was finally given a day off after working for three straight weeks, he was ordered back inside the palace by an armed guard who said the Sheikh had changed his mind.
Fearing for his life, he tried to escape by scaling a 5.4-meter perimeter wall to escape, sustaining serious injuries that required immediate attention and surgery, according to his lawsuit, which added that he was later terminated. “The amount of fear from that point was just like every day was a stressful day,” Allende said. “You wake up and kind of wondering what exactly is going to happen today.”
