Protection given to ally of journalist killed in Saudi consulate

COPENHAGEN — An Arab activist living in Norway said Monday he’s been given protection by two different Norwegian entities after the CIA informed officials of an unspecified threat against him, which he said is likely linked to his research on Saudi Arabia.

Iyad el-Baghdadi is an outspoken commentator on Arab affairs on Twitter, where he has over 130,000 followers. He used a press conference in Norway to explain some of the Saudi-related projects he’d been working on that might have made him a target for the kingdom.

“The decision to go public was not something that was taken lightly,” he said. “The advice I received repeatedly from independent security experts was that publicity would be protection.”

He explained that he worked without pay with a team of investigators hired by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos looking into a blackmail case against the U.S. billionaire, who also owns the Washington Post, where slain Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi was a contributing columnist. Khashoggi was killed by Saudi agents inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul last year.

Bezos accused the National Enquirer in the U.S. of trying to blackmail him by threatening to publish intimate details and text messages showing an extramarital affair he was having. He noted in a piece for Medium that his ownership of the Post may lead some powerful people to “wrongly conclude I am their enemy.”

El-Baghdadi said the lead investigator hired by Bezos — Gavin de Becker — contacted him after seeing his tweets and analysis about why Bezos’ personal texts might have been obtained. De Becker has since written in the Daily Beast that his team of private investigators “concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone and gained private information.”

Saudi Arabia has rejected allegations that it was...