Saudi crown prince MBS approved Jamal Khashoggi killing

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation to capture or kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, according to a U.S. intelligence report that could further strain U.S.-Saudi relations as the White House reassesses ties with Riyadh.

The report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, released Friday, cited the crown prince’s control of decision-making in Saudi Arabia as well as the involvement of a key advisor and members of the prince’s protective detail in the operation that killed Khashoggi, a critic of the royal family.

Also Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken imposed visa restrictions on 76 Saudi individuals whom are “believed to have been engaged in threatening dissidents overseas, including but not limited to the Khashoggi killing.” A State Department spokesperson would not provide the names of those individuals, saying visa records are confidential under U.S. law.

However, The New York Times reported that the Biden administration would not penalize the crown prince for Khashoggi’s killing. The White House decided penalizing the crown prince would have too high a cost on U.S.-Saudi cooperation in the areas of counterterrorism and confronting Iran.

Blinken said the restrictions are part of a new “Khashoggi Ban” that will bar visas for people acting on behalf of a foreign government who are believed to have engaged in “serious, extraterritorial counter-dissident activities.”

“Jamal Khashoggi paid with his life to express his beliefs,” Blinken said.

“President Biden said in a statement released last October on the second anniversary of the murder that Mr. Khashoggi’s death would not be in vain, and that we owe it to his memory to fight for a more just and free world,” the secretary of State said.

The Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Saudi Arabia’s Rapid Intervention Force and the former deputy head of the kingdom’s intelligence service, Ahmad Hassan Mohammed al-Asiri.

The CIA-led assessment, which until now had been classified, comes as President Joe Biden aims to reshape the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia after years in which the Trump administration ignored the kingdom’s human rights abuses despite condemnation in Congress and at the United Nations. 

The Trump administration had refused to provide a report to Congress in 2019 on who was responsible for Khashoggi’s death. Lawmakers had requested the report under the Magnitsky Act, which would have required sanctions against those responsible for the killing.

Khashoggi, a 59-year-old U.S. resident and Washington Post columnist, entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018, and never left.

He was killed by a group of assassins, who then dismembered his body. His remains were never recovered.