The U.S. Administration has determined that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has immunity in the case opened against him in the United States for the 2018 murder of journalist Yamal Khashogi inside the Saudi consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul.
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a court filing at the request of the State Department specifying that bin Salman’s recent appointment as Saudi prime minister confers immunity.
«The Department of State recognizes and permits the immunity of (Saudi) Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman as the acting head of the government of a foreign state,» said Richard Visek, a signatory to the document filed with the U.S. Justice.
Thus, he pointed out that «Prime Minister bin Salman, as acting head of a government, is immune while in office from the jurisdiction of the U.S. District Court in this lawsuit».
«In making this immunity determination, the State Department does not analyze the merits of the lawsuit and reiterates its unequivocal condemnation of the heinous murder of Yamal Khashogi,» emphasizes Visek, legal advisor to the Department of Justice.
Following this, the journalist’s romantic partner, Hatice Cengiz, has said that U.S. President Joe Biden «has saved the murderer by giving him immunity.» «He has saved the criminal and implicated himself in the crime. We will see who saves him next,» he said. Cengiz further noted that the Biden Administration’s decision means that «Yamal has died again today.»
«The US State Department has given immunity to Mohammed bin Salman. It was not a decision that anyone expected. We thought that maybe there would be a light to justice in the US, but again money comes first,» Cengiz has criticized in a series of messages posted on his account on the social network Twitter.
In this line, the non-governmental organization Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), founded by Khashogi before his murder, has pointed out that «the recognition by the Biden Administration of Bin Salman’s status as head of the Saudi Arabian government, which would give him immunity in the lawsuit against him for the murder of Yamal Khashogi, is a mistake on a legal and political level».
The U.S. administration’s pronouncement has come on the deadline for it, after a lawyer for the Saudi crown prince argued in October that his appointment as prime minister gave him «immunity.» In this regard, he said the court should recognize that it lacked «jurisdiction» to address the lawsuit.
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abzulaziz appointed on September 27 his son and ‘de facto’ leader of the country as prime minister because he already heads most of the country’s major portfolios and is at the forefront of decision-making in Riyadh, without the reasons for the appointment having transpired.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States in October 2020 on behalf of Cengiz and DAWN, includes Bin Salman and 20 other Saudis. The lawsuit seeks payment of civil damages and clarification through the U.S. justice system of the level of involvement of senior Saudi officials in Khashogi’s murder, including the release of information from intelligence officials and agents.
The judicial process in Saudi Arabia came to an end on September 7, 2020 when, following the appeals process, eight individuals were sentenced to prison terms for their responsibility in the murder, reducing the death penalty handed down in December 2019 against five of them.
Khashogi, a journalist critical of the Saudi royal house and who worked for ‘The Washington Post’, disappeared on October 2, 2018 after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to arrange documents so he could marry Cengiz. There, he was murdered and dismembered, without his remains having been found.
The then UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Agnes Callamard, who conducted an investigation into the case, said in June 2019 that evidence suggested Bin Salman and other senior officials would be responsible for the murder. She later said the final rulings were «a travesty of justice.»
