Saudi Prisoner update: Colorado Dept. of Corrections official was on a Hit List

It looks like we have an update to this story about Saudi National Homaidan al-Turki, who was convicted in 2006 on charges related to enslaving an Indonesian minor and repeatedly molesting her. A little more than one week after al-Turki was denied a request to serve out the remainder of his sentence in Saudi Arabia, the man responsible the decision – Tom Clements – was shot to death inside his home.

A couple of days later, the man suspected of murdering Clements – Evan Ebel – was killed in a shootout with police near Dallas, TX. Suspicions that al-Turki was involved dissipated almost instantly but were later revived.

Now we learn that Mr. Ebel actually had a hit list.

Via Kirk Mitchell at the Denver Post:

The parolee blamed for killing corrections chief Tom Clements was working from a hit list that also named parole director Tim Hand and two other corrections employees, Hand said Thursday.

“Evan Ebel killed Clements and the pizza delivery driver, but there were a lot of other people who had their fingerprints all over this,” said Hand, the Department of Corrections’ former division director over parole, community corrections and the Youthful Offender System. “This is big-time. This is a bunch of 211 Crew members who were doing this. It wasn’t Ebel working alone.”

Interim corrections chief Roger Werholtz sent an e-mail to DOC employees Thursday announcing that he had fired Hand, who had defended his parole officers’ handling of Ebel’s parole supervision.

The article then goes into details about Hand’s firing before returning to the hit list:

The hit list that Hand referred to on Thursday included the names of Clements, Hand and two others and was discovered in Ebel’s car after Ebel was killed by Texas law officers during a chase and shootout on March 21, Hand said.

Letters from other 211 Crew members included additional names of potential targets, Hand said.

Investigators believe Ebel, a member of the white supremacist prison gang 211 Crew, fatally shot Clements at his Monument home on March 19, five days after Ebel cut his ankle bracelet. Investigators also believe Ebel killed pizza delivery driver Nathan Leon on March 17.

“They pissed off Ebel or the 211 Crew for some reason,” Hand said. “My name came out as one of the persons they wanted.”

A bit later…

Hand said authorities are investigating the possibility that Saudi national Homaidan al-Turki, convicted of sexually assaulting his Indonesian housekeeper, commissioned the hit after Clements rejected his petition to be transferred to Saudi Arabia for the remainder of his prison sentence. Hand said he did not know any details about the ongoing investigation.

FBI agents are investigating any possible financial transactions between al-Turki and 211 Crew members to determine whether he had hired the gang for protection, among other things, sources have told The Post.

Attorneys for al-Turki deny their client had anything to do with Clements’ murder.

So far, there’s no new evidence that al-Turki or Saudi money was behind the murder of Clements but it is interesting that there was a hit list and that Clements wasn’t the only one on it.

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