The Justice Department’s defense of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who is accused of murdering and dismembering Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi, was not necessary legally and is an invitation to world leaders to flaunt human rights. It also gives Vladimir Putin a claim for immunity for his war crimes in the Ukraine.
Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, and a non-profit organization DAWN, Democracy for the Arab World Now, sued the crown prince, his top aides and others in Washington D.C. federal court over their alleged roles in Khashoggi’s killing. The lawsuit was filed under the Torture Victim Protection Act and the Alien Tort Statute, which give US federal courts jurisdiction over crimes committed overseas. In addition, the lawsuit claims that the Saudis lured Mr. Khashoggi to his death in Istanbul by refusing to provide him with documents in the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C.
Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in October 2018 by Saudi agents in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, an operation which US intelligence believed was ordered by Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. “Jamal died again today,” Khashoggi’s ex-fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, said minutes after the news became public that the Biden Administration supported Prince Salman’s claim of immunity. She added later: “We thought maybe there would be a light to justice from the USA But again, money came first.”
A federal judge in Washington had given the US government until midnight Nov. 17 to express an opinion on the claim by the crown prince’s lawyers that Prince Mohammed’s high official standing renders him legally immune in the case. The Biden administration also had the option of not stating an opinion either way. However, the Biden administration’s Justice Department sent the court a letter finding that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has immunity from a lawsuit concerning the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The judge dismissed the case against the crown prince on Dec. 6.
Biden Did Not Have to Do It
Harold Koh served as State Department legal adviser under President Barack Obama and later as a senior adviser to State Department Secretary Anthony Blinken during his first year as secretary of state. Koh said that the department should have simply remained silent in the case, rather than stake out a legal position that effectively amounts to “carrying MBS’s water.” The move could also set a precedent, protecting other world leaders who might be accused in lawsuits of serious crimes, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, Koh added. Koh also dismissed the assertion made by the department in a letter to the federal judge overseeing the Khashoggi lawsuit that MBS is legitimately the Saudi “head of state.” He noted that Saudi Arabia is a kingdom headed by his father and that MBS was only formally designated prime minister two months ago, after questions about his status had already become central in the lawsuit.
“If he’s the head of state, that means his father, the king, is not the head of state?” said Koh. As for MBS’s recent designation by the Saudis that he is prime minister, he added, “It was flagrantly done for the purpose of getting this immunity.”
Promises, Promises
“This is something that President Biden specifically promised to the American people to the entire world — that is, that he would hold Mohammad bin Salman accountable for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN, the human rights group that filed the lawsuit. “So, it’s pretty remarkable that he’s gone out of his way to intervene in a lawsuit that he didn’t have to intervene in and suggest immunity for [MBS] on very shaky legal grounds.”
“It’s beyond ironic that President Biden has singlehandedly assured MBS can escape accountability when it was President Biden who promised the American people he would do everything to hold him accountable,” Whitson, said in a statement.
Saudi Arabia has sided with Russia in the Ukraine War by holding back oil production. Nineteen Saudis also participated in the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York and the crash of an American Airlines flight 77 into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Saudi Arabia is a feudal state, a dictatorship of one family depriving its citizens of civil rights. The Biden Administration should be ashamed of itself for protecting Saudi Arabia and Mohammed Bin Salman, the brutal murderer of Jamal Khashoggi.
Joel Joseph is an attorney and chairman of the Made in the USA Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting American-made products. He is author of “Injustice Department: An Elected Attorney General and an Independent Department of Justice.” Email joeldjoseph@gmail.com. Phone 310 MADE-USA.
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2023
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