The Biden administration announced Thursday that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince will be acquitted of his role in the killing of a US-based journalist, which has been replaced by Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s impassioned campaign trail condemnation of Biden’s brutal killing.
The administration says the senior position of the crown prince, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler and newly named prime minister, should shield him from a lawsuit brought by Khashoggi, the fiancee of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and the rights group Khashoggi founded the democracy. Now for the Arab world.
The request is non-binding and a judge will ultimately decide whether to grant immunity. But it is bound to anger human rights activists and many US lawmakers, as Saudi Arabia has stepped up jails and other reprisals against peaceful critics at home and abroad and cut oil production, a move was seen by the US and its allies as an attempt to undermine the effort. To punish Russia for its war against Ukraine.
The State Department on Thursday called the administration’s call to shield the Saudi crown prince from U.S. courts over Khashoggi’s murder a “purely legal resolution.”
The State Department cited what it says is a longstanding precedent. Despite its recommendation to the court, the State Department said in its filing late Thursday, “it does not address the merits of the present case and reiterates its unequivocal condemnation of Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal murder.”
Saudi authorities killed Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Although her remains have been found, they are believed to have dismembered her. The U.S. intelligence community concluded that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince approved the killing of a widely known and respected journalist who had written critically of Prince Mohammed’s harsh methods of silencing those he considered rivals or critics.
A statement from the Biden administration on Thursday outlined visa bans and other penalties it meted out to low-ranking Saudi officials over the deaths.
“Since the early days of this administration, the United States government has expressed serious concerns about the responsibility of Saudi agents for the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi,” the State Department said. Its statement did not mention the prince’s own alleged role.
As a candidate, Biden vowed to make Khashoggi a “pariah” of Saudi rulers over the 2018 murder.
“I think it was a flat-out murder,” Biden said at a 2019 CNN town hall as a candidate. “And I think we should have dealt with it that way. I’ve said publicly that we should deal with it that way and that there should be consequences for how we deal with those forces.”
But as president Biden has sought to ease tensions with the kingdom, including bumping fists during a July state visit with Prince Mohammed, the US is working to persuade Saudi Arabia to reverse a series of cuts to oil production.
Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatis Cengiz, and DAWN sued Yuvraj, his top aides, and their alleged role in Khashoggi’s murder in federal court in Washington. Saudi Arabia has said the prince had no direct role in the killing.
“It is beyond ironic that President Biden has single-handedly assured that MBS can escape accountability when President Biden promised the American people he would do everything to hold him accountable,” Sarah Leigh Whitson, head of DAWN, said in a statement. Abbreviation of Prince.
In February 2021, Biden denied that the US government would punish Prince Mohammed for the murder of Khashoggi, a resident of the Washington area. Biden, speaking after authorizing the release of a declassified version of the intelligence community’s findings about Prince Mohammed’s role in the assassination, argued at the time there was no precedent for the US taking action against the leader of a strategic partner.
The U.S. military has long protected Saudi Arabia from external enemies, running global oil markets in exchange for Saudi Arabia.
“Today it is impossible to read the Biden administration’s move as anything other than a capitulation to the Saudi pressure strategy, including cutting oil production, to turn our arms to recognize MBS’s fake defense move,” Whitson said.
A federal judge in Washington gave the US government until midnight on Thursday to express an opinion on the claim by the crown prince’s lawyers that Prince Mohammed’s high status gives him legal immunity in the case.
The Biden administration also had the option of not commenting either way.
Sovereign immunity, a concept rooted in international law, protects states and their officials from certain legal actions in the domestic courts of other foreign states.
Upholding the concept of “sovereign immunity” would help ensure that U.S. leaders don’t have to worry about appearing in foreign courts to face lawsuits in other countries, the State Department said.
Human rights advocates had argued that the Biden administration would further abuse Prince Mohammed and other authoritarian leaders around the world if it supported the crown prince’s claim that his high office protected him from prosecution.
Prince Mohammed serves as Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler in place of his aging father, King Salman. In September, the Saudi king also temporarily transferred his title of prime minister — usually the title of Saudi king — to Prince Mohammed. Critics called it a bid to bolster Mohammed’s immunity claims.