Biden Administration Says Saudi Crown Prince Has Immunity in Khashoggi Trial
November 18, 2022 3 min 567 words
什么都让你说了，老JB的嘴活可以啊
The Biden administration told a U.S. court that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s status as a sitting head of government shields him from a civil lawsuit brought by the fiancée of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Mr. Khashoggi, a former royal insider who criticized Prince Mohammed’s policies in Washington Post columns, was killed in 2018 and his body dismembered by Saudi agents during a visit to the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate where he was seeking papers needed to marry Hatice Cengiz, a Turkish citizen.
The American intelligence community concluded that the crown prince likely ordered the killing. The Saudi government initially denied involvement in Mr. Khashoggi’s death but later acknowledged that government officials carried out the killing and said the crown prince wasn’t personally involved.
In a filing Thursday, the State Department said “common law principles of immunity” informed its determination of Prince Mohammed’s status, but that “does not reflect a judgment on the underlying conduct at issue in the litigation.” The de facto Saudi leader was deputy prime minister at the time of the killing but in September he was named prime minister, a title traditionally held by the king—currently his father, King Salman.
The court is expected to take up the issue in a hearing next month. Getting Ms. Cengiz’s lawsuit dismissed would help Saudi Arabia move past an episode that drove a wedge between Prince Mohammed and Western allies, particularly the U.S.
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While then-President Donald Trump expressed support for the prince after the killing, President Biden has taken a harder line, vowing during his 2020 presidential campaign to treat Saudi Arabia as a pariah. Barely a month into office, he released the long-delayed intelligence report about the prince’s role in the killing and sanctioned a number of Saudi security officials without penalizing the prince himself.
Mr. Biden refused to speak with Prince Mohammed during his first year in office. But in July, following a period of sustained high oil prices, the president traveled to Saudi Arabia. There, he fistbumped the young ruler ahead of a nearly three-hour meeting in which he said he accomplished “some significant business” and confronted the prince about the killing.
Prince Mohammed has steadily regained his international standing since then after staying away from the U.S. or Europe since 2018 and skipping international summits last year.
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Supporters of Mr. Khashoggi criticized the court filing as a betrayal and Ms. Cengiz said the administration’s decision was unexpected.
“We thought maybe there would be a light to justice from #USA,” she tweeted. “Jamal died again today.”
The case was brought in 2020 jointly with Democracy for the Arab World Now, a U.S.-based nonprofit set up to promote human rights and the rule of law that Mr. Khashoggi founded while living in self-exile in Washington.
“It’s beyond ironic that President Biden has single-handedly assured MBS can escape accountability when it was President Biden who promised the American people he would do everything to hold him accountable,” Sarah Leah Whitson,
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A Saudi court has handed down final sentences to eight low-ranking officials for their role in the killing, repealing death sentences after Mr. Khashoggi’s eldest son pardoned them. The public prosecutor declared the case closed.
Write to Stephen Kalin at [email protected]