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US protects Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman from lawsuit over Jamal Khashoggi murder
- The government said in a court filing that the prime minister title held by the monarch should give him immunity in the lawsuit filed by the slain journalist’s fiancée
- A rights group founded by Khashoggi called the move a ‘capitulation to Saudi pressure tactics’
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The Biden administration declared on Thursday that the high office held by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince should shield him from lawsuits for his role in the killing of a US-based journalist, a turnaround from President Joe Biden’s passionate campaign trail denunciations of Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the brutal slaying.
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The administration said the prince’s official standing should give him immunity in 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 decide whether to grant immunity. But it is bound to anger human rights activists and many US 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 US and its allies to punish Russia for its war against Ukraine.
The State Department on Thursday called the administration’s decision to try to protect the Saudi crown prince from US courts in Khashoggi’s killing “purely a legal determination.”
And despite backing up the crown prince in his bid to block the lawsuit against him, the State Department “takes no view on the merits of the present suit and reiterates its unequivocal condemnation of the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” the administration’s court filing late on Thursday said.
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