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Tag: Jamal Khashoggi

  • Saudi Crown Prince invited to the UK – government source

    Saudi Crown Prince invited to the UK – government source

    Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Crown Prince, has been invited to the UK, a government source claims.

    According to the official diary, No. 10 would confirm the Prime Minister’s engagements in the usual way.

    A different government source said there is no reason to think the visit won’t happen.

    This would be the first visit since the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

    At the time, the Western world condemned the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi Arabian regime.

    US intelligence agencies came to the conclusion that the prince must have approved the killing despite the prince’s assertions that he was involved in it.

    In recent months, UK politicians have expressed a desire for tighter ties with the kingdom. To diversify its economy away from oil, the country built an office in London for its trillion-pound investment fund.

    Grant Shapps, the secretary of energy security, met with Saudi Arabia earlier this year to discuss expanding cooperation in areas like space, technology, and essential minerals.

    Additionally, the administration has been considering whether to back a trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council. James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, recently visited Kuwait, Jordan, and Qatar.

    In the course of discussions with Gulf officials about reducing dependency on Russian oil and gas, the then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson met the crown prince in the Saudi capital of Riyadh last year.

    He was invited to the Queen’s burial in September, but declined, sending a senior Saudi royal in his stead.

    Six months before to Mr. Khashoggi’s death, in March 2018, Theresa May was the prime minister when he last travelled to the UK.

    The prince, who serves as the de facto head of state for the largest oil exporter in the world, received praise from Western leaders for implementing certain changes in the traditional Gulf state, such as removing the ban on women driving.

    However, the murder of Mr. Khashoggi seriously harmed his standing internationally.

  • Mohammed bin Salman: Saudi leader given US immunity over Khashoggi killing

    The US has determined that Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader – Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – has immunity from a lawsuit filed by murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancée.

    Mr Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi critic, was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.

    US intelligence has said it believes Prince Mohammed ordered the killing.

    But in court filings, the US State department said he has immunity due to his new role as Saudi prime minister.

    Mr Khashoggi’s ex-fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, wrote on Twitter that “Jamal died again today” with the ruling.

    She – along with the human rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), founded by Mr Khashoggi – had been seeking unspecified damages in the US from the crown prince for her fiancée’s murder.

    The complaint accused the Saudi leader and his officials of having “kidnapped, bound, drugged and tortured, and assassinated US-resident journalist and democracy advocate Jamal Khashoggi”.

    Prince Mohammed was named crown prince by his father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, in 2017. The 37-year-old was then handed the role of prime minister in September this year.

    He denies any role in the killing of Mr Khashoggi.

    Justice Department lawyers said in quotes cited by Reuters that as “the sitting head of a foreign government,” the crown prince “enjoys head of state immunity from the jurisdiction of US courts as a result of that office.”

    “The doctrine of head of state immunity is well established in customary international law,” Justice Department lawyers said.

    But the Biden administration was keen to emphasise that the ruling was not a determination of innocence.

    “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.”

    Biden fist bumps MBSReuters
    President Biden fist bumped the Saudi crown prince in July

    Saudi Arabia said the former Washington Post journalist had been killed in a “rogue operation” by a team of agents sent to persuade him to return to the kingdom.

    However, US officials said the CIA had concluded, “with a medium to high degree of certainty”, that MBS – as the prince is known – was complicit.

    The murder caused a global uproar and damaged the image of Prince Mohammed and his country.

    It also led to a major downturn in US-Saudi relations, with Mr Biden vowing to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” while he was campaigning for the presidency in 2019.

    Mr Biden declined to talk to Mohammed bin Salman when he first became president.

    But over the summer, President Biden said he wanted to “reorient” relations, ahead of a visit to Saudi Arabia in July.

    His visit – in which he was pictured fist-bumping the crown prince – was criticised as validating the Saudi government following Mr Khashoggi’s murder.

    Sarah Leah Whitson, a spokeswoman for Dawn, wrote on Twitter that it was “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”.

     

    Source: BBC