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US intelligence has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation in Turkey to “capture or kill” veteran journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The four-page report declassified by the Biden administration and released on Friday said the assessment was based on factors including Prince Mohammed’s “control of decision-making in the kingdom.”
The report noted the direct involvement of key lieutenants of the crown prince in the 2018 operation against Khashoggi, as well as members of his elite protection team. He also noted the crown prince’s personal support for the use of violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi.
Khashoggi, one of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent journalists, was assassinated at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 and his body was dismembered.
The report fell short of describing the operation as a mission to kill Khashoggi from the start. “We do not know if these people knew in advance that the operation would result in the death of Khashoggi,” the report says. He did not present any new evidence directly linking Prince Mohammed to the murder.
Although the findings were expected, the assessment by US agencies is embarrassing for Prince Mohammed, who is the day-to-day ruler of the kingdom and has tried to put assassination behind him. It will bring new scrutiny on his autocratic leadership and threatens to strain relations between the United States and one of its traditional Arab allies.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, issued a new visa restriction policy called the “Khashoggi Ban” on Friday aimed at people working on behalf of foreign governments to target dissidents abroad. Blinken said the United States had imposed the ban on 76 Saudis “who are believed to have been involved in threatening dissidents abroad, including but not limited to the murder of Khashoggi.” Names will not be made public.
The Biden administration faces a complex balancing act to deliver on the president’s campaign promise to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” while maintaining a strategic relationship with the world’s top oil exporter and a major partner in regional security. President Joe Biden’s team has vowed to “recalibrate” the relationship.
Almost a year after Khashoggi’s assassination, Prince Mohammed said he took “full responsibility” for the assassination as the “leader of Saudi Arabia.” But Riyadh has always tried to characterize the murder as a rogue operation and has denied that Prince Mohammed had any knowledge of it.
The US assessment said it was “highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the authorization of the crown prince,” citing their “absolute control of the kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations” since 2017. .
The report mentions 21 Saudi officials who it said “participated, ordered or were complicit in or responsible for” the murder of Khashoggi on behalf of Prince Mohammed. Among them were Saud al-Qahtani, who was an advisor to the crown prince and considered by many to be his executor, and Ahmed al-Asiri, who was deputy intelligence chief at the time.
Qahtani was one of 17 Saudis the Trump administration sanctioned for his alleged role in the operation. The designations do not include Asiri.
After the report was released on Friday, the Treasury announced sanctions against Asiri, subjecting him to an asset freeze in the United States. He also imposed sanctions on the Rapid Intervention Force, an elite personal protection detachment whose mission is to defend the crown prince.
Donald Trump, the former US president, supported Prince Mohammed when the assassination triggered the biggest diplomatic crisis in Saudi Arabia in years.
The Saudi authorities tried 11 people for the murder and eight were convicted of murder. But their names were never released under Saudi law, and human rights activists condemned what they described as a sham trial that exonerated the masterminds. Qahtani and Asiri were acquitted due to what the Saudi authorities said was a lack of evidence.
The White House has already said that Biden will not speak directly to Prince Mohammed, whose direct counterpart is Lloyd Austin, the US Secretary of Defense, but is willing to preserve the relationship of the countries.
According to a White House reading of Biden’s first conversation as US president with King Salman, Prince Mohammed’s father, on Thursday, the American leader said he wanted to “make the bilateral relationship as strong and transparent as possible. possible”.
Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said after the report was released: “For too long, the United States did not hold Saudi Arabia responsible for the brutal murder of the journalist, dissident and resident of Virginia. , Jamal. Khashoggi “.
Tamara Wittes, a fellow expert at the Brookings Institution, said she did not think it was a realistic prospect to blacklist the crown prince, but added: “The ball is in the Saudi court to take full responsibility.”
