Qatar Emir’s brother ordered killing two people, his personal guard says

A British newspaper has described Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, a stepbrother of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, as a “playboy”.
Daily Mail quoted a former US marine as saying that he was hired by Sheikh Khalid as his head of security.
He accused Sheikh Khalid of ordering him to kill two people in California.
Matthew Pittard says he worked for Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani for 10 months between 2017 and 2018, during which time he was told to kill a man who tried to collect a debt from the royal, and a woman who he became jealous over.
Pittard is now suing the Sheikh, along with Matthew Allende who was employed as the Qatari’s medic around the same time, the newspaper said.
It quoted Allende as saying that he was often asked to stay up for 36 hours straight with the prince while he partied, was effectively held hostage, and injured himself trying to escape.
The pair are asking for a total of $34million in unpaid wages and overtime, unfair dismissal, personal injury and other malpractice, it said.
It added that Pittard first worked for the Sheikh as a defense contractor to one of his companies in Qatar by training soldiers and police officers.
Speaking to ABC Action News, Pittard said that in the same month he got the job, Sheikh Khalid asked him to kill a man who had come to collect an alleged $6,000 debt.
Pittard says he refused and paid off the debt himself. Asked whether the Sheikh could have been joking, he responded ‘absolutely not’.
Then, in November the same year, Pittard claims the Sheikh ordered him to kill a woman because he believed she had been texting a man from another Middle Eastern country, the newspaper said.
It added that the man claimed that
It added that the man claimed that he was asked to shoot her twice in the head ‘Mafia-style’ and bury her in the desert.
In September 2017, the same man says, the royal recruited him as head of security in the US, and senior defense consultant in Qatar.
His job involved guarding the Sheikh and his entourage wherever they travelled, which was primarily in the US, Qatar and London.
‘At that point, I got up and said, ‘Don’t ever ask me to do that again,” said Pittard.
Then, in July the following year and while working in Qatar, Pittard said he learned that Sheikh Khalid was keeping an American citizen against their will at one of his properties.
He claims the Sheikh had the American locked up in jail, but he was able to help the escape along with staff from the US embassy.
When Khalid found out, he claims the royal held him prisoner, threatened to kill him and his family, then forced him to sign a non-disclosure agreement while brandishing a Glock pistol, Daily Mail said.
Meanwhile, Allende, who worked for Sheikh Khalid from October 2017 to February 2018, says he was routinely asked to work for 24 or 36 hours straight during wild parties to ‘keep him breathing’.
In his interview with ABC, Pittard said he was once forced to administer Narcan – a drug commonly used to treat heroin overdoses – to the Sheikh after he collapsed during one party.
Allende said that after three weeks of non-stop work and a 36-hour straight shift at the prince’s Majhils residence in Qatar, he asked for and was given a day off.
However, when he went to leave the compound a guard with a gun stopped him and said the prince had changed his mind, the newspaper said.
He was ordered to go back inside, but instead chose to scale an 18ft perimeter wall in fear for his life.
Allende said he jumped down from the top of the wall but felt the bones in his foot snap and required immediate medical attention.
He was kept in Qatar for the next two months before being allowed to fly back to the US once he had healed.
This is not the first time the Sheikh has been in trouble in the US, the newspaper said. In 2015, he was forced to flee the country after getting caught speeding and skipping stop signs in Beverly Hills in a bright yellow Ferrari.
It added that Sheikh Khalid allegedly threatened to kill a cameraman who filmed the incident, then claimed diplomatic immunity when police were called.
He also told officers that he wasn’t behind the wheel of either car, before leaving the country along with the two vehicles.
Khalid, Daily Mail said, also drives cars as a racing driver in Qatar, where he is known as the ‘patron sheikh’ of drag-racing.
He has worked to introduce the races to his home country, while also investing more than $10million in the sport.