Saudi Arabia’s King Salman is pictured carrying out his royal duties after foiling alleged coup plot

Saudi Arabia released images of King Salman carrying out his royal duties on Sunday, after a stunning purge of at least three princes including his brother and nephew for allegedly plotting a coup.

The brother and nephew of the Saudi king were arrested on Friday over a plot to oust him and his son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, a brother of King Salman, and the monarch’s nephew Prince Mohammed bin Nayef were accused of treason.

Saudi royal guards detained the trio, in a move that signalled Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s tightening grip on power.

They were taken from their homes early on Friday by black-clad royal guards, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Saudi royal court accused the two men, once potential contenders for the throne, of ‘plotting a coup to unseat the king and crown prince’ and could face lifetime imprisonment or execution, the newspaper said. 

The detentions also raised speculation about the health of the 84-year-old king and whether Prince Mohammed’s succession to the Arab world’s most powerful throne was imminent.

But the official Saudi Press Agency posted photos of the king presiding over the swearing-in ceremony of newly appointed Saudi ambassadors to Ukraine and Uruguay.

A source close to the Saudi leadership said on Saturday the ‘king is healthy and fine’ and the detentions were meant to enforce ‘discipline’ within the royal family.

The crown prince is ‘in control’ and the purge was carried out ‘after an accumulation of negative behaviour by the two princes’, this source added without elaborating.

Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, a brother of King Salman, and the monarch’s nephew Prince Mohammed bin Nayef were detained after they were accused of plotting a palace coup aimed at unseating the crown prince, heir to the Saudi throne, sources said.

Prince Nayef’s younger brother, Prince Nawaf bin Nayef, was also detained, they added.

The detentions mark the latest crackdown by Prince Mohammed, the king’s son who has consolidated his grip on power with the imprisonment of prominent clerics and activists as well as princes and businessmen. 

He is already viewed as the de facto ruler, controlling all the major levers of government, from defence to the economy. 

Prince Nayef, a once powerful figure as head of Saudi counter terrorism efforts, had been crown prince until 2017. 

King Salman took away the title and put his son – Prince Mohammed bin Salman – first in line for the throne. 

The New York Times also reported his and Prince Ahmed’s detention, adding that Prince Nayef’s younger brother, Prince Nawaf bin Nayef, had also been detained. 

Prince Mohammed has also faced a torrent of international condemnation over the murder of critic Jamal Khashoggi inside the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate in October 2018.

He was accused of ordering the journalist’s murder, and the killing sparked calls for him to be replaced as Crown Prince. 

He was also accused of hacking the phone of Amazon boss Jeff Bezos after the pair swapped numbers. 

Already viewed as the de facto ruler controlling all the major levers of government, from defence to the economy, the prince is widely seen to be stamping out traces of internal dissent before a formal transfer of power from his 84-year-old father King Salman.

‘Prince Mohammed is emboldened – he has already ousted any threats to his rise and jailed or murdered critics of his regime without any repercussion,’ Becca Wasser, a policy analyst at the US-based RAND Corporation, said of the latest crackdown.

‘This is a further step to shore up his power and a message to anyone – including royals – not to cross him.’

Prince Ahmed, said to be in his 70s, had returned to the kingdom from his base in London in the aftermath of the Khashoggi scandal, in what some saw as an effort to shore up support for the monarchy.

Just before his return in October 2018, the prince had courted controversy over remarks he made to protesters in London chanting against Saudi royals over the kingdom’s involvement in the ongoing conflict in Yemen.

‘What does the family have to do with it? Certain individuals are responsible… the king and the crown prince,’ he said, according to a widely-circulated online video of the incident.

The comment was seen by many as rare criticism of the kingdom’s leadership and its role in Yemen, but Prince Ahmed dismissed that interpretation as ‘inaccurate’.

Prince Mohammed had edged out Prince Nayef, the former crown prince and interior minister, in 2017 to become heir to the Arab world’s most powerful throne.

At the time, Saudi television channels showed Prince Mohammed kissing the hand of the older prince and kneeling before him in a show of reverence.

Western media reports later said that the deposed prince had been placed under house arrest, a claim strongly denied by Saudi authorities.  

The same year that Prince Nayef was stripped of his crown prince status, Prince Mohammed ordered a sweeping crackdown, arresting senior members of the royal family and billionaire businessmen. He claimed it was a bid to tackle corruption.

The group of the country’s most powerful figures were held in a function room at the Ritz Carlton hotel in their home country. 

Pictures showed them sleeping on mattresses on the floor. 

A source told MailOnline at the time that the men were being strung up by their feet and beaten by American private security contractors.  

Among those arrested on allegations of corruption was Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, the Saudi King’s nephew who is worth more than $17bn according to Forbes, and owns stakes in Twitter, Lyft and Citigroup. 

He was stripped of his position as National Guards chief. 

The Saudi crown prince, according to the source, also confiscated more than $194 billion from the bank accounts and seized assets of those arrested.  

The source said that Salman, often referred to by his initials MBS, was conducting some of the interrogations on the princes and billionaries himself.

‘When it’s something big he asks them questions,’ the source said.

‘He speaks to them very nicely in the interrogation, and then he leaves the room, and the mercenaries go in. The prisoners are slapped, insulted, hung up, tortured.’

Prince Mohammed did win plaudits from Western leaders after he introduced some moderate reforms – allowing women in Saudi Arabia to drive for the first time ever and introducing cinemas to the country.

The Crown Prince – also known simply as MBS – also reined in the country’s fierce and ultra conservative religious police.

Leaders including Theresa May and Donald Trump have rolled out the red carpet for him during his lavish visits. 

The latest detentions come at a sensitive time as Saudi Arabia bars Muslim pilgrims from Islam’s holiest sites to contain the novel coronavirus.

The kingdom has suspended the ‘umrah’ year-round pilgrimage over fears of the disease spreading to Mecca and Medina, raising uncertainty over the upcoming hajj – a key pillar of Islam.

The oil-rich kingdom is also grappling with the plunging price of crude, its major source of revenue.