planned to place two Saudi religious officials from the kingdom’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs under full-time surveillance. “They didn’t want to give the Saudis a black eye by letting these guys walk into a trap,” the former official said. officials suspected that someone in the Saudi government had been warned. To gain the trust of a reluctant source, investigators lied and told a Saudi man he had a previously unknown child. The investigator employed a graphics editor to fabricate an image of a 5-year-old using images of the man and his wife.

Source: New York Times January 23, 2020 13:41 UTC