US court dismisses suit against Saudi prince in killing
A US federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the killing of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, bowing to the Biden administrations insistence that the prince was legally immune in the case.
District of Columbia US District Judge John D Bates heeded the US governments motion to shield Prince Mohammed from the lawsuit despite what Bates called credible allegations of his involvement in Khashoggis murder.
A team of Saudi officials killed Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, had written critically of the harsh ways of Prince Mohammed, Saudi Arabias de facto ruler.
The US intelligence community concluded the Saudi crown prince ordered the operation against Khashoggi. The killing opened a rift between the Biden administration and Saudi Arabia that the administration has tried in recent months to close, as the US unsuccessfully urged the kingdom to undo oil production cuts in a global market racked by the Ukraine war. Khashoggi had entered the Saudi consulate to obtain documents needed for his upcoming marriage. His fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, who had waited unknowingly outside the consulate as he was killed, and a rights group founded by Khashoggi before he died brought the lawsuit. The lawsuit also named two top aides of the prince as accomplices.
The Biden administration, invited but not ordered by the judge to offer an opinion on the matter, declared last month that Prince Mohammeds standing as Saudi Arabias prime minister gave him sovereign immunity from the US lawsuit. Saudi Arabias king, Salman, had named Prince Mohammed, his son, as prime minister weeks earlier. It was a temporary exemption from the kingdoms governing code, which makes the king prime minister. Khashoggis fiancee and his rights group argued the move was a maneuver to shield the prince from the US court. Bates expressed uneasiness with the circumstances of Prince Mohammeds new title, and wrote in Tuesdays order that there is a strong argument that plaintiffs claims against bin Salman and the other defendants are meritorious.” But the governments finding that Prince Mohammed was immune left him no choice but to dismiss the prince as a plaintiff, the judge wrote. He also dismissed the two other Saudi plaintiffs, saying the US court lacked jurisdiction over them.
The Biden administration argued longstanding legal precedent on immunity for heads of government from other nations courts, in some circumstances, demanded that the prince be shielded as prime minister, regardless of the prince only recently obtaining the title.
The Biden administration already had spared Prince Mohammed from government penalties in the case, again citing sovereign immunity. Rights groups and Saudi exiles argued that sparing Prince Mohammed from accountability in Khashoggis killing would give the crown prince and other authoritarian rulers around the world a green light for future abuses.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Federal staff and is auto-published from a syndicated feed.)
