King Abdullah installs son as Riyadh governor, shakes up military

King Abdullah Bin Abdelaziz Al-Saud announced a major overhaul of Saudi Arabia’s defence structures on 14 May, in a series of royal orders that also saw his son, Prince Turki Bin Abdullah, moved to the key position of governor of Riyadh. At the defence ministry, deputy minister Prince Salman Bin Sultan was removed and replaced with Prince Khalid Bin Bandar, who has generally been seen as very much a ‘king’s man’. The ageing king also appointed a new chief of general staff and new heads of the Naval and Air Forces, in what seems to be a continuation of efforts to sweep out the old guard and embed the new.