US report reveals Saudi prince ‘approved’ Khashoggi murder

A declassified United States intelligence report has revealed that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved of an operation to capture or kill dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in 2018.

|
Sarah Silbiger/Reuters
The Committee to Protect Journalists and other press freedom activists hold a candlelight vigil in front of the Saudi Embassy in Washington to mark the anniversary of Jamal Khashoggi's murder, Oct. 2, 2019. Riyadh has denied the involvement of its crown prince.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved of an operation to capture or kill dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was murdered in 2018, according to a declassified United States intelligence assessment released on Friday in a manner choreographed to limit damage to U.S.-Saudi ties.

Mr. Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who wrote opinion columns for the Washington Post critical of the crown prince’s policies, was killed by a team of operatives linked to the crown prince in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.

Riyadh has denied any involvement by the crown prince, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler.

“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in the report posted on its website.

“We base this assessment on the Crown Prince’s control of decisionmaking in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman’s protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi,” it added.

In declassifying the report, U.S. President Joe Biden reversed his predecessor Donald Trump’s refusal to release it in defiance of a 2019 law, reflecting a new U.S. willingness to challenge the kingdom on issues from human rights to the war in Yemen.

However, Mr. Biden is treading a fine line to preserve ties with the kingdom as he seeks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with its regional rival Iran and to address other challenges including fighting Islamist extremism and advancing Arab-Israeli ties.

Washington choreographed events to soften the blow, with Mr. Biden on Thursday speaking with the crown prince’s father, King Salman, in a call in which both sides said they reaffirmed their decades-old alliance and pledged cooperation.

But Mr. Biden’s administration is considering the cancellation of arms deals with Saudi Arabia that pose human rights concerns while limiting future military sales to “defensive” weapons, sources familiar with the administration’s thinking said.

A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. focus was on ending the conflict in Yemen even as it ensures Saudi Arabia has everything it needs to defend its territory.

The declassified intelligence, prepared by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, echoed a classified version of a report on Mr. Khashoggi’s murder that Mr. Trump shared with members of Congress in late 2018.

Mr. Trump’s rejection of demands by lawmakers and human rights groups to release a declassified version at the time reflected a desire to preserve cooperation with Riyadh amid rising tensions with Iran and to promote U.S. arms sales to the kingdom.

Mr. Biden’s new director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, has committed to complying with a 2019 defense bill that required her office to release within 30 days a declassified report on Mr. Khashoggi’s murder.

Mr. Khashoggi was a Saudi journalist living in self-imposed exile in Virginia who wrote opinion pieces for the Washington Post critical of the policies of the crown prince – known to some in the West as MbS.

He was lured on Oct. 2, 2018, to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul with a promise of a document that he needed to marry his Turkish fiancée. A team of operatives linked to the crown prince killed him there. His remains have not been found.

Riyadh initially issued conflicting stories about his disappearance, but eventually admitted that Mr. Khashoggi was killed in what it called a “rogue” extradition operation gone wrong.

Twenty-one men were arrested in the killing and five senior officials, including the deputy intelligence chief, Ahmad Asiri, and Saud al-Qahtani, a senior aide to Prince Mohammed, were sacked.

In January 2019, 11 people were put on trial behind closed doors. Five were given death sentences, which were commuted to 20 years in prison after they were forgiven by Mr. Khashoggi’s family, while three others were given jail terms.

Mr. Asiri was tried but acquitted “due to insufficient evidence,” the prosecution said, while Mr. Qahtani was investigated but not charged.

As part of Mr. Biden’s rebalancing of ties with Saudi Arabia, he will only communicate with King Salman, the White House has said, a move that may allow Washington to put some distance between itself and the crown prince.

That will restore protocol broken by Mr. Trump and his son-in-law and top aide, Jared Kushner, who maintained a direct channel to the crown prince.

Prince Mohammed has consolidated power since ousting his uncle as heir to the throne in a 2017 palace coup, seeking to win public support by overseeing popular economic and social reforms.

But he also has had opponents and women’s rights activists detained and pursued risky foreign gambits, some of which backfired, like the intervention in Yemen, where a war between Saudi and Iranian proxies has created a humanitarian crisis.

This story was reported by Reuters.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to US report reveals Saudi prince ‘approved’ Khashoggi murder
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2021/0226/US-report-reveals-Saudi-prince-approved-Khashoggi-murder
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe