Biden administration grants immunity to Saudi crown prince, murderer of Jamal Khashoggi
The US State Department has granted immunity to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, shielding him from prosecution for the murder of Saudi political dissident and legal permanent US resident Jamal Khashoggi. The decision was disclosed last week and widely reported on Friday.
This action shows that the Biden administration’s claim to defend democracy and human rights—the supposed justification for its intervention in the Ukraine war and around the world—is a flat-out lie.
Biden said contemptuously during his visit to Saudi Arabia last May, when journalists questioned him about the murder and dismemberment of Khashoggi by a hit squad inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, “Why don’t you guys talk about something that matters? I’m happy to answer a question that matters.” That is the authentic, arrogant voice of US imperialism.
The State Department was responding to an official query from a federal judge hearing the civil suit brought by Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, and a human rights group Khashoggi had founded, seeking to hold bin Salman accountable for the murder. It issued instructions to the US Department of Justice to intervene in the case by informing the judge that bin Salman had sovereign immunity, “which the United States has consistently and across administrations applied to heads of state, heads of government and foreign ministers while they are in office.”
The action appeared to be coordinated with the Saudi regime, since in September bin Salman was appointed prime minister by his father, the king, who, according to Saudi custom, had carried the title of prime minister, with his son as deputy prime minister. That appointment meant that bin Salman now qualified for the exemption from legal liability. Bin Salman has not traveled to Europe or the United States since the Khashoggi murder in 2018 to avoid possible legal problems.
Biden claimed during the 2020 election campaign that he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” on the world scene because of the Khashoggi murder. Once in office, he released an assessment by the CIA—which has vast experience both in murders and their cover-up—that bin Salman ordered the killing of Khashoggi, which was carried out under the direction of his personal security chief.
Fred Ryan, the publisher of the Washington Post, where Khashoggi wrote a regular op-ed column focused on the Middle East, and particularly the Saudi monarchy, denounced the State Department, saying in a statement, “President Biden is failing to uphold America’s most cherished values. He’s granting a license to kill to one of the world’s most egregious human rights abusers.”
The record of bloody tyranny in Saudi Arabia extends far beyond the gruesome killing of Khashoggi. The monarchic regime kills dozens of its own subjects every year, mainly through public beheadings and hangings, especially targeting advocates of the rights of the country’s Shia minority, who live mainly in the oil-rich Eastern Province. In the the most recent mass execution, last March, 81 men were beheaded at bin Salman’s orders.
None of this matters compared to the Saudi supply of oil to the world market and its lucrative arms purchases, mainly from American manufacturers, to bolster its critical military role in the Arabian Peninsula and against Iran, just across the Persian Gulf. Biden traveled to Riyadh in May to make amends with bin Salman for his campaign rhetoric and plead with the de facto Saudi ruler to boost production to offset the cutoff of Russian supplies as a result of the war in Ukraine. Instead, bin Salman recently ordered a reduction in Saudi production, evidently seeking to force more US concessions, including the State Department declaration last week.
Biden’s rapprochement with bin Salman is part of a broader pattern, in which Washington cultivates a network of autocrats and murderers around the world in order to maintain its global domination. Two weeks ago Biden traveled to Egypt to attend the UN-sponsored COP27 climate summit. There he was welcomed by the country’s military dictator, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, shaking hands stained with the blood of thousands of Egyptian workers and youth massacred in the 2013 military coup that suppressed a budding revolutionary movement.
Biden praised el-Sisi’s role in Gaza, where the military regime has helped prop up Israeli domination of nearly two million Palestinians by policing and virtually closing the enclave’s border with Egypt. He pledged to preserve “our strong defense partnership,” expressing the hope that “we can even say we’re closer and stronger in every way.”
This week, Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, is meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who aims to reprise his father’s role as a dictatorial ruler of that country. Harris traveled to Manila Sunday after attending the summit of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Thailand.
In Bangkok, she had a cordial chat with Thai military ruler Prayut Chan-o-cha, who suppresses workers and small farmers on behalf of the monarchy, the big financial interests, and the imperialist powers, especially the US and Japan. According to the official readout of the meeting, the two leaders “discussed our security cooperation... and the benefits our alliance provides for our people as we promote a free and open Indo-Pacific.” That is diplomatic jargon for Thailand lining up with the US-led campaign against China.
The readout said Harris “reaffirmed the enduring partnership between the United States and Thailand, one that is rooted in common values, and discussed efforts to strengthen our cooperation across a range of bilateral and global issues.” Thailand’s military rulers have dispersed parliaments, rigged elections, banned opposition parties and violently suppressed antigovernment protests. To claim “common values” has an ominous ring.
Both Democratic and Republican senators spoke out in support of the State Department announcement, citing the geopolitical interests of American imperialism in the Middle East as the overriding issue. Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said, “We need to be enough of a realist to realize that Saudi Arabia has been a bulwark against Iran. It is a leader in a very messy part of the world.”
Republican Senator Tom Cotton was even blunter. Asked about the issue during an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” he said, “Look, if we didn’t have allies and partners who don’t always share our political systems, our cultural and social sensibilities, we wouldn’t have any allies and partners. Saudi Arabia has been an important partner of the United States for 80 years. Presidents of both parties have worked with them.”
He continued, “[W]hat matters most about governments around the world is less whether they’re democratic or nondemocratic and more whether they’re pro-American or anti-American. And the simple fact is, Saudi Arabia has been an American partner going back 80 years.”
There is another issue in the embrace of the murderer of Khashoggi by the Biden administration, one which is perhaps even more important than the specific role of the Saudi regime in US foreign policy. As the State Department statement said, “Across administrations, there is an unbroken practice of the United States recognizing immunity for heads of government while they are in office—and we expect other governments to do the same for the United States.”
Former State Department lawyer Brian Finucane told the Washington Post that every US administration was concerned about American officials being prosecuted in foreign courts for war crimes and other charges. “Reciprocity concerns lie at the core of this rule,” he told the newspaper.
When it comes to murder and other barbaric acts, bin Salman, el-Sisi and Marcos Jr. cannot hold a candle to an American president. The victims of American military aggression, “targeted killings,” and economic blockades (Iraq, Iran, North Korea) number in the millions. No government since Hitler’s Germany has killed so many. Thus every American president fears legal consequences.
It is for that reason that the United States has refused, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), and Congress even passed legislation authorizing US military action to rescue any American brought before the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.
As the leaders of the most powerful imperialist power, Biden & Co. can defy the toothless machinery of the United Nations and the ICC with impunity, as well as whitewashing the bloody crimes of their allies and stooges like bin Salman. Their downfall will not come through bourgeois diplomatic institutions, but through the mobilization of the American and world working class in a revolutionary movement against the capitalist system as a whole.
Biden Prints Money for the Taliban
The Taliban chop hands while Biden funds them.
After being described as “partners” by the Biden administration, the Taliban announced that they’re bringing back sharia punishments by chopping off hands and stoning their victims.
Last year, the Biden administration had praised the Taliban’s “openness” to women’s rights.
This development puts the nail in the coffin of claims by Biden administration figures that the Jihadist organization had changed into a kinder, gentler Taliban. But the media has conveniently ignored revelations of the close collaboration between the administration and the Taliban.
Front Page Magazine was one of the few conservative publications that exposed the over $1.1 billion in aid directed by the administration after the Taliban takeover, the special licenses issued by the Biden administration authorizing financial transactions with the Taliban and Al Qaeda’s Haqqani Network to distribute that aid, and the billions stolen from 9/11 families for the Taliban.
The Biden administration has been stonewalling the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction with the State Department and Samantha Power’s USAID refusing to allow employees to be interviewed about, among other things, their “compliance with the laws and regulations prohibiting transfers of funds to members of the Taliban and the Haqqani Network”.
Instead, the Biden administration has been chartering Osama bin Laden’s old airline which had been used to ferry drugs and terrorists to evacuate the Americans that Biden had left behind. These hostages have become another cash cow that the Taliban are using to extract money from American taxpayers through the offices of their allies in the Biden administration.
Biden administration figures have repeatedly met with Taliban leaders. According to Al Jazeera, run by the state sponsors of the Islamic terror group, the administration had even provided assurances that the United States will not fund any resistance to the Taliban.
Coming a few months after Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed while under Taliban protection, a “high-level delegation” that allegedly included a top CIA figure, agreed not to “fund any armed groups or non-state actors in the country”, particularly the National Resistance Front, consisting of the Northern Alliance members who had originally helped us liberate Afghanistan.
This betrayal came even after clear evidence that the Taliban were harboring Al Qaeda.
Why would the Biden administration unilaterally throw away our best leverage against the Taliban without getting them to end their support for Al Qaeda and other terror groups?
The Biden administration then went beyond just appropriating $1.1 billion in humanitarian aid, much of which will benefit the Taliban in one way or another, while authorizing transactions with the terrorists, but actually conspired to print money for the Taliban to replace their old bills.
According to Biden’s State Department spokesman, the administration was “working hard with international banks to facilitate payment transfers from Afghanistan’s central bank to European printing companies where new banknotes would actually be produced” to “replace what had been crumbling banknotes in Afghanistan”.
Spokesman Ned Price explained that, “Afghanistan’s markets, even today, run widely on cash, but existing banknotes are crumbling. And that’s why this is such an urgent challenge.”
The Biden administration’s idea of an “urgent challenge” in Afghanistan isn’t preventing Al Qaeda from reforming, it’s not getting out Americans, or stopping the Taliban from stoning people, it’s arranging for a Polish printing company to churn out banknotes for the Taliban.
It’s not enough for the Biden administration to steal billions from 9/11 families and send it to the Taliban, it has to go all the way and actually print money for the Islamic terrorist group.
Thanks to Biden, the Taliban will get 10 billion in ‘Afghanis’ from Poland and another 10 billion from a French company. $3.5 billion in assets in the United States are being transferred to a Swiss trust fund held for the Taliban so that a future administration won’t be able to recover it.
The Biden administration claims to be concerned about Taliban atrocities and then continues to enable the terrorists.
Karen Decker, the head of the U.S. Mission to Afghanistan, conducted a “listening tour” of Afghan women who fled the Taliban and claimed that she shares their “concerns and their hope.” Then she described printing money for the Taliban as “part of our commitment to help the Afghan people”. The only Afghan people that she’s helping are the Taliban.
Thomas West, Biden’s Special Representative to Afghanistan, boasted, “I am very pleased to say that in the past 24 hours we have finally seen the conclusion of two currency transactions.”
There is no other conclusion to be drawn from these latest revelations except that the Biden administration wants the Taliban to remain in power. And has been consistently scheming to bypass legal restrictions on funding terrorism to funnel money to the Taliban.
A responsible administration that served our national interests would be providing a fraction of the aid to the National Resistance Front and other anti-Taliban groups that it’s funneling to Ukraine, and it would, at the very least, use sanctions to undermine the Taliban regime.
Instead, Biden is laboring to protect the Taliban and to keep the terrorists in power.
That’s the same conclusion that the Taliban have drawn. That’s why after prolonged hesitation and doubletalk, they are shedding any pretense about their intentions.
The Taliban’s Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada ordered judges to impose “the ruling of sharia” on, among others, “seditionists” and “apostates”.
“Those cases that have met all the Shariah conditions of limitation and retribution, you are obliged to issue the limitation and retribution, because this is the order of the Sharia and my order and it is obligatory to act,” the Taliban’s spokesman tweeted.
The Taliban have begun a comprehensive crackdown using the traditional brutal punishments of Islam. They’re testing the Biden administration and know that they have nothing to worry about.
Supreme Leader Akhundzada had been a chief judge in the Taliban’s court system during their original period of rule when they became notorious for inflicting grotesque and horrifying punishments on anyone who displeased them.
Nothing has really changed.
Last year, the Taliban captured Danish Siddiqui, the chief photographer for Reuters, in a mosque, beat and tortured him, ran him over with a car, and shot him at close range.
The same media, including Reuters, which has amplified Qatari propaganda about its Al Jazeera terrorist operatives, like Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey and Shireen Abu Akleh in Israel, has remained mostly silent about this atrocity against an actual journalist by the allies of Qatar.
The Biden administration, which has attacked Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi’s death and announced an FBI investigation of Israel over Abu Akleh’s death, has made no such efforts over the mutilation and murder of Siddiqui. Biden condemned the Saudis and the Israelis over Khashoggi and Abu Akleh, but never once mentioned Siddiqui’s name.
Jalina Porter, until recently a Washington Wizards cheerleader, who was elevated to a State Department spokeswoman, failed to condemn the Taliban after Siddiqui’s brutal murder, but only called for “an end to the violence” and a “just and durable peace settlement.”
The complicity and the double standards spoke eloquently about the administration’s agenda.
Last year, the Taliban’s Supreme Leader made his position clear to the rest of the world, “I cannot compromise on Shariah to work with you or even move a step forward.” He warned that “even if the world uses an atomic bomb, we will rule the country according to the Sharia Law.”
That was back in July.
The Biden administration and its media allies knew that they were lying about the kinder, gentler Taliban and their openness to human rights. They told those lies to keep the money flowing.
After robbing 9/11 families, diverting money to the Taliban under a dozen pretexts, including payments for hostages that the Biden administration chose to leave behind, and even collaborating in printing money for the terrorist group, there will be a brief condemnation as the Taliban resume openly mutilating, killing and torturing victims through their Islamic courts.
But the Biden administration will make sure to keep taxpayer money flowing to the terrorists.
The shameful treason we saw at the panicked evacuation of Afghanistan was not the climax, it was the middle of a conspiracy to put the Taliban in power by the enemies of America. Those enemies are not just in Moscow, Tehran or Beijing, they are right here in Washington D.C.
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
THE SAUDIS KNOW HOW CORRUPT THE LAWYER REGIMES OF THE CLINTONS, THE OBOMBS, AND BIDEN ARE.
DO THE SAUDIS FUND JUST THE BUSH LIBRARY, CLINTON LIBRARY AND OBOMB'S EGO TOWER AS WELL AS THE PHONY CLINTON FOUNDATION FAMILY SLUSH FUND.
FEW HAVE DONE MORE TO PROTECT THE 9/11 INVADERS THAN BARACK OBAMA. YOU SAW HIM BEND OVER AND KISS THE SAUDI LARDBUCKET DICTATOR'S HEM
SAUDI DIRTY MONEY ENDS UP IN THE CLINTON FOUNDATION FAMILY SLUSH FUND
Jesse Watters: The Clintons' crooked connections
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnPSvkxKuLg
One topic that Hillary is quick to criticize President Trump on is his relationship with Saudia Arabia. It’s ironic given the Clinton Foundation’s refusal to state that they will no longer accept financial donations from The Kingdom as others have.
LOL! LOL! THE TRUMP-KUSHNER FAMILY OF GRIFTERS IS WAY, WAY, WAY UP SAUDI ASS!
IT HAPPENED! Donald Trump accuses Barack Obama of being 'Most CORRUPT President in US history’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu78BIdyx-o
BARACK OBAMA and his SAUDIS PAYMASTERS: Did they build his Muslim tower in Chicago?
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/10/swamp-keeper-trump-claims-fake-news-is.html
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA: DEDICATED SERVANT TO THE MUSLIM DICTATORSHIP OF SAUDI ARABIA
- BUT THEN THEY BOUGHT AND OWN THE CLOSET MUSLIM
https://globalistbarackobama.blogspot.com/2022/07/closet-muslim-barack-obama-begs-to-go.html
“Of course, one of the main reasons the nation is now “divided, resentful and angry” is because race-baiting, Islamist, class warrior Barack Hussein Obama was president for eight long years." MATTHEW VADUM
WAS THE RUSSIAN HOAX ONLY OBAMA’S ATTEMPT TO PUT ASIDE TRUMP FOR AN OBAMA THIRD TERM FOR LIFE???
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/03/obama-and-phony-investigation-of-trump.html
They Destroyed Our Country
“They knew Obama was an unqualified crook; yet they promoted him. They knew Obama was a train wreck waiting to happen; yet they made him president, to the great injury of America and the world. They understood he was only a figurehead, an egomaniac, and a liar; yet they made him king, doing great harm to our republic (perhaps irreparable.)”
These people were engaged in a massive political conspiracy. The Democrats made a decision from the outset—beginning with the election campaign of the favored candidate of Wall Street and the CIA, Hillary Clinton—that they would not oppose Trump on his anti-working-class social policy or his authoritarian hostility to democratic rights and promotion of anti-immigrant racism, but on issues of imperialist foreign policy.
“Obama’s new home in Washington has been described as the “nerve center” of the anti-Trump opposition. Former attorney general Eric Holder has said that Obama is “ready to roll” and has aligned himself with the “resistance.” Former high-level Obama campaign staffers now work with a variety of groups organizing direct action against Trump’s initiatives. “Resistance School,” for example, features lectures by former campaign executive Sara El-Amine, author of the Obama Organizing.”
Barack Obama’s plot for a third term for life
A Muslim dictatorship like his crony paymasters, the 9-11 invading Saudis who have financed him for decades.
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/03/obamas-plotting-for-third-and-fourth.html
“Obama has the totalitarian impulse. After all, he went around saying he didn't have Constitutional authority to legalize the illegals, and then he tried anyway. The courts stopped him.”
What was Obama’s motive? Simple, he knew if he did that for Hillary, he’d own the next President of the United States, and could blackmail her with the truth till the end of time. It literally would have given him a 3rd and 4th term.
THE OBAMA – CLINTON RUSSIAN CONNECTION
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-traitors-how-obama-and-clinton.html
WITH THESE TRAITORS, JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY!
How President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton aided Russia’s quest for global nuclear dominance.
The Democrats are now officially the party of Jew-hatred. This is largely due to the disastrous presidency of Barack Hussein Obama. PAMELA GELLER
https://globalistbarackobama.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-disaster-of-barack-obama-democrats.html
Abunimah’s piece -- and Obama’s numerous anti-Semitic associations -- got little attention. Throughout his life Barack Obama has been close friends with numerous virulent anti-Semites: Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Khalid al-Mansour, Rashid Khalidi and others. PAMELA GELLER
OBAMA AND HIS SAUDIS PAYMASTERS… Did he serve them well?
Malia, Michelle, Barack and the College Admissions Scandal
https://globalistbarackobama.blogspot.com/2019/03/malia-michelle-barack-and-college.html
Michelle was the next to attend Harvard, in her case Harvard Law School. “Told by counselors that her SAT scores and her grades weren’t good enough for an Ivy League school,” writes Christopher Andersen in Barack and Michelle, “Michelle applied to Princeton and Harvard anyway.”
GOOGLE WHAT THE OBOMB DID FOR HIS SAUDIS PAYMASTERS
Barack Obama’s back door, however, was unique to him. Before prosecutors send some of the dimmer Hollywood stars to the slammer for their dimness, they might want to ask just how much influence a Saudi billionaire peddled to get Obama into Harvard.
“Of course, one of the main reasons the nation is now “divided, resentful and angry” is because race-baiting, Islamist, class warrior Barack Hussein Obama was president for eight long years." MATTHEW VADUM
Biden Administration Requests Immunity for Saudi Crown Prince MBS in Khashoggi Case
The U.S. Department of Justice declared in a court filing on Thursday that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman should receive immunity from a lawsuit filed by the fiance of slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Khashoggi disappeared in October 2018 after visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, reportedly to obtain documents necessary to marry his fiance Hatice Cengiz. His body has never been found, though Turkish investigators concluded that Saudi government officials killed and dismembered the journalist. Khashoggi was an Islamist writer and critic of the Saudi royal family, leading to accusations that Mohammed bin Salman, known commonly as MBS, ordered the killing.
“This was a heinous crime,” MBS said in 2019. “But I take full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia, especially since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government.”
MBS has denied, however, ordering the killing and insisted it was a “mistake.”
Leftist American President Joe Biden repeatedly touted the Khashoggi killing as a matter of great importance to him and vowed while running for president to turn the nation of Saudi Arabia itself into a global “pariah.” The pariah campaign appeared to abruptly end this summer, when Biden organized a visit to the country and met with MBS personally, greeting him with a fist bump in the city of Jeddah.
The Justice Department filing in Cengiz’s lawsuit, which named the crown prince as a defendant, declared that MBS was eligible for legal immunity because his father, King Salman, had appointed him prime minister of the country in September. The Justice Department intervened in the suit in response to a State Department request.
“Prime Minister bin Salman as a sitting head of government is immune while in office from the jurisdiction of the United States District Court in this suit,” the filing reportedly read.
“The State Department recognizes and allows the immunity of Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman as sitting head of government of a foreign state,” it continued, adding, “In making this immunity determination, the Department of State takes no view on the merits of the present suit and reiterates its unequivocal condemnation of the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi.”
The filing echoes requests by the crown prince’s lawyers for their client to be dismissed from the case on legal immunity grounds.
“The royal order [promoting MBS to prime minister] leaves no doubt that the Crown Prince is entitled to status-based immunity,” the attorneys wrote in a petition in early October, shortly after MBS received the prime minister title.
Cengiz, who filed the suit, pilloried Biden personally in statements on Twitter following the submission of the filing in defense of MBS’s immunity.
“Jamal died again today,” she wrote. “Biden saved the murderer by granting immunity. He saved the criminal and got involved in the crime himself”:
Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a human rights organization founded by Khashoggi serving as co-plaintiff in the case, also expressed disgust with Biden personally and his administration on Thursday.
“It’s really beyond ironic that President Biden has basically delivered an assurance of impunity for Mohammed bin Salman, which is the exact opposite of what he promised to do to hold the killers of Jamal Khashoggi accountable,” Sarah Leah Whitson, DAWN executive director, said in a statement.
Democrats, and Biden in particular, spent much of 2019 condemning Saudi Arabia and expressing their belief that, rather than a gruesome mistake by consulate staff, Khashoggi’s killing was a direct order from MBS.
“Yes, and I said it at the time. Khashoggi was, in fact, murdered and dismembered, and I believe on the order of the crown prince,” Biden said during a debate against other Democrat party candidates in 2019. “And I would make it very clear we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them, we were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.”
“There’s very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia,” Biden asserted.
Biden’s decision to visit Saudi Arabia in July thus prompted widespread outrage, to which the White House reacted with a column in the Washington Post by the president. Biden titled the article “Why I’m Going to Saudi Arabia,” but he did not offer any explanation for his decision other than denying that he was seeking to convince the Saudis to produce more oil, thus bringing down gasoline prices at home.
“I know that there are many who disagree with my decision to travel to Saudi Arabia. My views on human rights are clear and long-standing,” Biden wrote, “and fundamental freedoms are always on the agenda when I travel abroad, as they will be during this trip, just as they will be in Israel and the West Bank.”
Shortly before arriving in Saudi Arabia, Biden ignored a request from Cengiz to discuss Khashoggi’s killing.
The visit to Saudi Arabia went poorly. A photo of Biden fist-bumping a smiling MBS prompted global outrage, to which Biden responded by claiming he addressed Khashoggi during his conversation with the crown prince.
“I was straightforward and direct when discussing it,” Biden said after the discussion. “I made my view crystal clear. I said very straightforwardly. For an American president to be silent on an issue of human rights is inconsistent with who we are and who I am.”
Saudi Foreign Affairs Minister Adel al-Jubeir, who was at the meeting, later claimed that Biden “took Saudi Arabia’s assurances at face value” that MBS did not order Khashoggi’s execution.
“T]he Crown Prince explained to him that this was a tragedy for Saudi Arabia and that those who were responsible for it have been investigated and faced [the] law and are now paying the price for the crime that was committed,” al-Jubeir told left-wing outlet CNN, “and we — the conversation then moved on in terms of the official discussions.”
Following Biden’s visit, the Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, claimed in October that MBS “mocks President Biden in private, making fun of the 79-year-old’s gaffes and questioning his mental acuity.”
In an interview in March, MBS described Khashoggi’s killing as a violation of his, the crown prince’s, human rights.
“I feel, myself, that human rights law wasn’t applied to me,” MBS lamented to the Atlantic. “Article XI of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that any person is innocent until proven guilty. I didn’t get that right. So how can you talk to me about human rights without treating me according to my Article XI human rights? That doesn’t make sense.”
Biden administration says Saudi prince has immunity in Khashoggi killing lawsuit
WASHINGTON, Nov 18 (Reuters) - The Biden administration ruled on Thursday that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has immunity from a lawsuit over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, drawing immediate condemnation from the slain journalist's former fiancee.
Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in October 2018 by Saudi agents in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, an operation which U.S. intelligence believed was ordered by Prince Mohammed, who has been the kingdom's de facto ruler for several years.
"Jamal died again today," Khashoggi's ex-fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, said on Twitter minutes after the news became public. She added later: "We thought maybe there would be a light to justice from #USA But again, money came first."
The Saudi government communications office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
A spokesperson for the Saudi consulate in Washington could not be reached for comment on Thursday evening, after business hours.
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“This is a legal determination made by the State Department under longstanding and well-established principles of customary international law," a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said in a written statement. "It has nothing to do with the merits of the case."
The spokesperson referred further questions to the State and Justice Departments.
In a document filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Justice Department attorneys wrote that "the doctrine of head of state immunity is well established in customary international law."
Justice Department lawyers said that the executive branch of U.S. government, referring to the Biden Administration, had "determined that defendant bin Salman, as the sitting head of a foreign government, enjoys head of state immunity from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts as a result of that office."
In late September, Saudi King Salman named Prince Mohammed prime minister in a royal decree which a Saudi official said was in line with responsibilities that the crown prince was already exercising.
"The Royal Order leaves no doubt that the Crown Prince is entitled to status-based immunity," lawyers for the prince said in an Oct. 3 petition requesting a federal district court in Washington dismiss the case, citing other cases where the United States has recognised immunity for a foreign head of state.
FIST-BUMP
Biden was criticized for fist-bumping the crown prince on a visit to Saudi Arabia in July to discuss energy and security issues. The White House said Biden had told Prince Mohammed that he considered him responsible for Khashoggi's killing.
The prince, known by his initials MbS, has denied ordering Khashoggi's killing but acknowledged later that it took place "under my watch."
The longstanding alliance between the two countries was strained in October when a decision by the OPEC+ oil producer group led by Saudi Arabia to cut oil production unleashed a war of words between the White house and Riyadh.
The decision had raised concerns in Washington about the possibility of higher gasoline prices ahead of the November midterm elections. This latest move shows the administration's weakness vis-a-vis the kingdom, some analysts said.
"Deciding to grant sovereign immunity to MbS will send a very clear signal to him: that he should continue asserting Saudi Arabia's nationalist interests without compromise, even when these go directly against core interests of the United States," Cinzia Bianco, visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said.
Khashoggi had criticized the crown prince's policies in Washington Post columns. He had traveled to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain papers he needed to marry Cengiz, a Turkish citizen.
"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. Not even the Trump administration did this," Sarah Lee Whitson, a spokeswoman for Democracy for the Arab World Now, said in a written statement.
In a highly charged global atmosphere, the United States is keen to prevent its long-time ally from further distancing itself.
"Amid great power competition with Russia and China, the United States recognizes that Saudi has other options. And a further pivot of Saudi to the East must be prevented at all costs," Andreas Krieg, professor at King's College in London, said
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