WASHINGTON, Feb 27, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – The United States on Friday for the
first time publicly accused Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of
approving the gruesome murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi,
unveiling a raft of punitive measures but stopping short of targeting the
powerful heir apparent.
The prince, who is de facto ruler of the US ally and oil provider,
“approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi
journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” said an intelligence report newly declassified
by President Joe Biden’s administration.
The report said that given Prince Mohammed’s influence, it was “highly
unlikely” that the 2018 murder could have taken place without his green
light. The killing also fit a pattern of “the crown prince’s support for
using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad.”
Khashoggi, a US resident and critic of Prince Mohammed who wrote for The
Washington Post, was lured to Istanbul’s Saudi consulate in October 2018,
then killed and cut into pieces.
The Treasury Department announced it was freezing assets and criminalizing
transactions with a former intelligence official as well as the Rapid
Intervention Force, an elite unit the report said “exists to defend the crown
prince” and “answers only to him.”
After the report was released, Biden said that “we are going to hold
(Saudi Arabia) accountable for human rights abuses… it is outrageous what
happened.”
But the United States stopped short of directly targeting the 35-year-old
crown prince, known by his initials MBS.
In honor of the slain writer, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced
the “Khashoggi Act” that will ban entry into the United States of foreigners
who threaten dissidents or harass reporters and their families and
immediately placed 76 Saudis on the blacklist.
“We have made absolutely clear that extraterritorial threats and assaults
by Saudi Arabia against activists, dissidents and journalists must end. They
will not be tolerated by the United States,” Blinken said in a statement.
– Not seeking ‘rupture’ –
Blinken, questioned by reporters, said that “this is bigger than any one
person,” explaining Biden is trying “not to rupture the relationship, but to
recalibrate to be more in line with our interests and our values.”
An advocacy group founded by Khashoggi, Democracy for the Arab World Now,
called on the president to impose sanctions on Prince Mohammed — with a
number of lawmakers from Biden’s Democratic Party also pushing for more
action.
“We must also ensure that there are real consequences for individuals like
MBS; if not, autocrats around the world will get the message that impunity is
the rule,” said Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee.
The Saudi foreign ministry in a statement denounced the “negative, false
and unacceptable assessment” and rejected “any measure that infringes upon
its leadership.”
The Saudi government, which initially said it had no information on
Khashoggi, says it accepts responsibility for the killing but casts it as a
rogue operation that did not involve the prince.
Biden’s decision to release the report — first completed under Donald
Trump — was a sharp departure from his predecessor, who had vowed to keep
working with Saudi Arabia due to the kingdom’s lavish purchases of US weapons
and shared hostility toward Iran.
Biden spoke late Thursday with 85-year-old King Salman after the White
House made clear he had no intention of speaking to the crown prince, who by
contrast had formed a friendship with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
– Fatal consulate appointment –
A veteran Saudi journalist who had gone into self-exile, Khashoggi was
told by Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States to go to the kingdom’s
Istanbul consulate if he wanted to obtain documents for his forthcoming
marriage to a Turkish woman, Hatice Cengiz.
Within minutes of entering the building on October 2, 2018, the 59-year-
old was strangled and his body dismembered by a 15-member team allegedly sent
from Riyadh under the direction of a top aide to Prince Mohammed, Saud al-
Qahtani.
The intelligence report said seven of the 15 Saudis came from the Rapid
Intervention Force, which it said had earlier acted to suppress dissent in
the kingdom and abroad.
The Central Intelligence Agency had quickly concluded that Prince Mohammed
ordered the assassination but Trump refused to release the report.
A US official said it was “obviously reality” that the new administration
will still have to deal with the prince, who is also defense minister, on
issues including oil, Iran and Yemen, where Biden has cut support for Saudi’s
devastating offensive.
Few observers of Saudi Arabia believe the murder could have taken place
without the knowledge of Prince Mohammed, a calculating strongman who has
jailed critics and locked up competing factions in the royal family.