Gay Saudi prince faces trial for killing servant

LONDON - A gay Saudi prince strangled his servant to death at a hotel in London in a ferocious murder which had a “sexual element”, a British court heard Tuesday.

Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser al Saud, 33, had subjected the 32-year-old Bandar Abdulaziz to physical assaults before the latter was found strangled in bed Feb 15. A series of injuries including bite marks on the victim’s cheeks revealed the “ferocity of the attack to which he had been subjected”, a jury of the Old Bailey court was told.

According to the Daily Mail, the prince, a distant relative of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd, claimed his aide had been robbed and attacked three weeks before his death, the court heard.

The pair had arrived at the hotel Jan 20 this year. Al Saud also said he had been drinking at the hotel bar until the early hours and had woken at 3 p.m. to find “he could not wake Bandar”, jurors were told.

But CCTV footage from a lift at the Landmark hotel where they were staying showed the victim had been subjected to a “really nasty assault” by the prince Jan 22, said the prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw.

He said the assault was not “an isolated incident” and a second was captured in the hotel lift on Feb 5.

It became clear to police that he had been killed “in the privacy of the room he had shared with the defendant and when alone with him”, the court heard.

The prince was arrested and detectives began trying to establish “the true nature of the relationship” between the men, he added.

Al Saud claimed they were “friends and equals” and that he was heterosexual, jurors were told. But Laidlaw said: “The evidence establishes quite conclusively that he is either gay or that he has homosexual tendencies.

“It is clear that his abuse of Bandar was not confined simply to physical beatings. There is clear evidence, over and above the bite marks, that there was also a sexual element to his mistreatment of the victim.”

The body of Abdulaziz was found lying on his bed in a pool of blood. He was punched in the face, strangled and bitten, the court was told.

Al Saud, who had seemed “shocked and upset” about Abdulaziz’s death, had lied to police about his true relationship with him and his sexuality, Laidlaw said.