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| Prince Salman: heir to the throne |
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah yesterday issued a royal decree naming his half-brother Prince Salman as heir to the throne following the death of Crown Prince Nayef.
The monarch appointed Salman “crown prince and deputy prime minister” while also keeping him on as defence minister, said the decree published by the state news agency SPA.
In a simultaneous decree, the monarch promoted Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz to take over from Nayef as interior minister, the SPA said.
Salman, 76, became defence minister in October following the death of Sultan, the then crown prince and long-serving defence and aviation minister, while Nayef was named heir to the throne.
It was the first ministerial post for Salman who had been the governor of Riyadh for around 50 years.
Nayef died on Saturday in Switzerland of “cardiac problems”, a medical source in Geneva said.
King Abdullah in 2006 established the Allegiance Council, a commission of 35 senior princes, as a new mechanism to name heirs to the throne in the long term.
But the royal decree showed yesterday that the monarch had taken his decision “after consulting the law of allegiance” without any reference to debating his choice in the council.
He did the same when he named Nayef crown prince, since the new system of selecting an heir is not supposed to come into force during King Abdullah’s reign.