Ex-Marine Claims He Was Hired By Qatari Sheikh To Kill Two In California
An ex-Marine hired by a Qatari Sheikh as his head of security has accused the billionaire playboy 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, who is the brother of Qatar’s ruler, along with Matthew Allende who was employed as the Qatari’s medic around the same time.
Allende says 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 $34 million in unpaid wages and overtime, unfair dismissal, personal injury and other malpractice.
Pittard says he first worked for the Sheikh as a defence contractor to one of his companies in Qatar by training soldiers and police officers.
In September 2017 he says the royal recruited him as head of security in the US, and senior defence consultant in Qatar.
His job involved guarding the Sheikh and his entourage wherever they travelled, which was primarily in the US, Qatar and London.
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.
He claimed he was asked to shoot her twice in the head ‘Mafia-style’ and bury her in the desert.
‘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.
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.
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. 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.
He 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 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.
ABC was unable to reach the Qatari embassy in the US for comment, and attempts by Mail Online to reach the prince’s companies were also unsuccessful.
