Story Highlights
- Historical event
- 25 March 1975
- The real motive of Prince Faisal to kill his half-uncle-king still remains a mystery. There are numerous theories. According to one, it was all organized by the CIA (Prince Faisal was educated in the United States).
On this day Saudi Arabia an unusual assassination of the reigning king occurred. Namely, King Faisal was killed by none other than his younger nephew of the same name – Faisal.
The young Prince Faisal was the son of the king’s half-brother, who returned from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia not so long ago. He came to the audience of his half uncle – King Faisal – in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
In the hall where the king received guests, Prince Faisal joined a Kuwaiti delegation. When he came before the king, he was recognized and the king bent down to warmly greet him, as is the Saudi custom. At that moment, the prince took out a gun and shot three times. The first bullet hit the king in the chin, the other his ear. The third bullet missed, and the prince then threw his gun.
He was soon overpowered by the guards. King Faisal died on that same day in a hospital after doctors unsuccessfully tried to keep him alive. The prince was tried and publicly executed in less than three months after the assassination.
The real motive of Prince Faisal to kill his half-uncle-king still remains a mystery. There are numerous theories. According to one, it was all organized by the CIA (Prince Faisal was educated in the United States) or some other Western agency in order to remove the unsuitable king.
According to another theory, the prince was a drug addict (he really did enjoy drugs in America). According to the third, Prince was mentally disturbed, or he wanted to avenge the death of his brother. In the U.S., the prince was in a relationship with a blonde girl named Christine Surma who was at one time trying to become an actress.
She later interpreted the prince’s move as an attempt to achieve peace between Saudi Arabia and Israel, so that he killed the king under whose government that could not be achieved.
To make things even more complicated, when returning from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia, the prince was in East Germany (for unknown reasons) and Beirut (where he received psychiatric treatment). All in all, there are many different possibilities on how to interpret the prince’s motives.
