Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman arrives for the G-20 leaders’ summit in Bali, Indonesia on Nov. 15, 2022.
Kevin Lamarque | AFP | Getty Images
The Biden administration declared Thursday that the high office held by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince should shield him from lawsuits for his role within the killing of a U.S.-based journalist, a turnaround from Joe Biden’s passionate campaign trail denunciations of Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the brutal slaying.
The administration said the prince’s official standing should give him immunity within the lawsuit filed by the fiancée of slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and by the rights group he founded, Democracy for the Arab World Now.
The request is non-binding and a judge will ultimately determine whether to grant immunity. Nevertheless it is sure to anger human rights activists and lots of U.S. lawmakers, coming as Saudi Arabia has stepped up imprisonment and other retaliation against peaceful critics at home and abroad and has cut oil production, a move seen as undercutting efforts by the U.S. and its allies to punish Russia for its war against Ukraine.
The State Department on Thursday called the administration’s decision to try to guard the Saudi crown prince from U.S. courts in Khashoggi’s killing “purely a legal determination.”
The State Department cited what it said was longstanding precedent. Despite its suggestion to the court, the State Department said in its filing late Thursday, it “takes no view on the merits of the current suit and reiterates its unequivocal condemnation of the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi.”
Saudi officials killed Khashoggi on the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. They’re believed to have dismembered him, although his stays have never been found. The U.S. intelligence community concluded Saudi Arabia’s crown prince had approved the killing of the widely known and revered journalist, who had written critically of Prince Mohammed’s harsh ways of silencing of those he considered rivals or critics.
The Biden administration statement Thursday noted visa restrictions and other penalties that it had meted out to lower-ranking Saudi officials within the death.
“From the earliest days of this Administration, the USA Government has expressed its grave concerns regarding Saudi agents’ responsibility for Jamal Khashoggi’s murder,” the State Department said. Its statement didn’t mention the crown prince’s own alleged role.
Biden as a candidate vowed to make a “pariah” out of Saudi rulers over the 2018 killing of Khashoggi.
“I feel it was a flat-out murder,” Biden said in a 2019 CNN town hall, as a candidate. “And I feel we should always have nailed it as that. I publicly said on the time we should always treat it that way and there must be consequences regarding how we take care of those — that power.”
But Biden as president has sought to ease tensions with the dominion, including bumping fists with Prince Mohammed on a July trip to the dominion, because the U.S. works to influence Saudi Arabia to undo a series of cuts in oil production.
Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, and DAWN sued the crown prince, his top aides and others in Washington federal court over their alleged roles in Khashoggi’s killing. Saudi Arabia says the prince had no direct role within the slaying.
“It’s beyond ironic that President Biden has singlehandedly assured MBS can escape accountability when it was President Biden who promised the American people he would do all the things to carry him accountable,” the top of DAWN, Sarah Leah Whitson, said in a press release, using the prince’s acronym.
Biden in February 2021 had ruled out the U.S. government imposing punishment on Prince Mohammed himself within the killing of Khashoggi, a resident of the Washington area. Biden, speaking after he authorized release of a declassified version of the intelligence community’s findings on Prince Mohammed’s role within the killing, argued on the time there was no precedent for the U.S. to maneuver against the leader of a strategic partner.
The U.S. military long has safeguarded Saudi Arabia from external enemies, in exchange for Saudi Arabia keeping global oil markets afloat.
“It’s inconceivable to read the Biden administration’s move today as anything greater than a capitulation to Saudi pressure tactics, including slashing oil output to twist our arms to acknowledge MBS’s fake immunity ploy,” Whitson said.
A federal judge in Washington had given the U.S. government until midnight Thursday to precise an opinion on the claim by the crown prince’s lawyers that Prince Mohammed’s high official standing renders him legally immune within the case.
The Biden administration also had the choice of not stating an opinion either way.
Sovereign immunity, an idea rooted in international law, holds that states and their officials are protected against some legal proceedings in other foreign states’ domestic courts.
Upholding the concept of “sovereign immunity” helps be sure that American leaders in turn do not have to fret about being hauled into foreign courts to face lawsuits in other countries, the State Department said.
Human rights advocates had argued that the Biden administration would embolden Prince Mohammed and other authoritarian leaders all over the world in additional rights abuses if it supported the crown prince’s claim that his high office shielded him from prosecution.
Prince Mohammed serves as Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler within the stead of his aged father, King Salman. The Saudi king in September also temporarily transferred his title of prime minister — a title normally held by the Saudi monarch — to Prince Mohammed. Critics called it a bid to strengthen Mohammed’s immunity claim.