The US grants immunity to Saudi Prince Bin Salman in the case opened for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi

The Administration of Democrat Joe Biden, who promised to make Saudi Arabia "a pariah state" during the campaign that led him to the presidency, considers that the position held by Mohamed bin Salmán, crown prince and, since the end of September, Saudi prime minister , legally shields him in the case opened against him in the US for the murder of critical journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

The US Department of Justice filed a file on Thursday night with a court at the request of the State Department, specifying that the recent appointment of MBS, as the prince is known, gives him legal immunity.

"The State Department recognizes and allows the immunity of the (Saudi) Prime Minister, Mohamed bin Salmán, as the acting head of the Government of a foreign State," said Richard Visek, signatory of the document presented before the US Justice.

For the Biden Administration, MBS will be immune "from the jurisdiction of the US district court in this lawsuit" as long as he continues in office.

The State Department, however, "reiterates its unequivocal condemnation of the heinous murder of Khashoggi," the document underlines.

Simply, he explains, he does not rule on whether or not the demand is in place.

In February 2021, a month after Biden's arrival at the White House, the publication of a CIA report made it clear that "the crown prince of Saudi Arabia approved the operation to capture or kill" the critical journalist, collaborator of the American newspaper

.

The pronouncement of the US Administration occurs on the deadline for this, after a lawyer for the prince argued in October that his appointment as prime minister, on September 27, gave him "immunity."

The official document indicates that the court must recognize that it lacks jurisdiction to address the claim.

With his appointment as head of government, a position to add to the ownership of other portfolios and his role in the succession, the powerful MBS reaffirms himself as the regime's true strongman.

Jamal died again today #injustice #JamalKhashoggi

— Hatice Cengiz خديجة (@mercan_resifi) November 18, 2022

Since the firm condemnation of the Saudi regime in his election campaign, Biden has gradually rehabilitated MBS.

In mid-July, with the price of oil at its highest and the supply of crude oil in question due to the war in Ukraine, the US president made a tour of the Middle East with a stopover in Riyadh, centered on a tense protocol meeting that did not satisfy to those who defend the repudiation of the heir.

Also forced by the energy crisis, MBS's visit to Paris, where he was officially received by Emmanuel Macron, at the end of the same month, was another step in the international rehabilitation of what intelligence services and human rights groups consider to be the instigator. of

Khashoggi 's

In addition, to Biden's demand that Saudi Arabia, as leader of OPEC, increase crude production to lower prices, the group of producing and exporting countries responded a month later with the opposite measure: closing the tap on the wells. , which many considered a direct snub from Riyadh to Washington, a gesture that was criticized by many Democratic cadres.

The United States state department has granted immunity to #MBS.

It wasn't a decision everyone expected.

We thought maybe there would be a light to justice from #USA But again, money came first.

This is a world that Jamal doesn't know about and me..!

#justiceforjamal #injustice

— Hatice Cengiz خديجة (@mercan_resifi) November 18, 2022

The journalist's fiancée, Hatice Cengiz —Khashoggi had gone to the consulate of his country to obtain the necessary papers to marry— has accused Biden of “saving the murderer by granting him immunity”.

She “she has saved the criminal and has been implicated in the crime.

We will see who saves him later ”, she stated.

"Jamal has died again today," Cengiz lamented on his Twitter account, stressing that Washington's was an unexpected decision: "We thought that maybe there would be a light for justice in the United States, but again the money has gone ahead," he criticized.

The NGO Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), founded by Khashoggi himself, has described it as a “legal and political error”.

DAWN signs, together with Cengiz, the lawsuit against MBS and 20 other Saudi citizens, filed in October 2020 in the US, to clarify the level of involvement of senior Saudi officials in the murder and dismemberment of the journalist.

His remains have not been found.

The judicial process in Saudi Arabia, which rights organizations consider a simulation of justice, concluded on September 7, 2020, with the sentencing to prison terms of eight implicated in the murder.

The sentence reduced the capital sentence handed down in December 2019 against five of them.

Regarding Khashoggi's heirs, residents of the Desert Kingdom, the Saudi court staged a forgiveness and reconciliation ceremony that also failed to satisfy the regime's critics.

Four of the assassins received paramilitary training in the US.

The then UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Agnes Callamard, who investigated the case, said in June 2019 that evidence suggested bin Salman and other senior officials were responsible for the killing.

Later, she described the rulings of the process carried out in Saudi Arabia as a "travesty of justice".

Callamard, today the head of Amnesty International, was directly threatened by the Saudi authorities.

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