Despite the threats, Biden refrained from punishing him.
Crown Prince Bin Salman (Photo: Reuters)
A court in the United States rejected last night (Tuesday) a lawsuit filed against the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, for planning the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The judge ruled that the Saudi crown prince has immunity, despite the "substantial evidence" of involvement in the murder.
Khashoggi, who was a prominent critic of bin Salman, was assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
District Judge John Bates, who has a long history in cases related to security issues, stated in his ruling that his decision was made with "discomfort".
However, he added that his hands were effectively tied because the Biden administration recently expressed a position that the future queen of Saudi Arabia has immunity from prosecution in the United States.
The meaning of the ruling is that bin Salman will now be able to freely visit the United States and other areas under its jurisdiction.
The lawsuit was filed by his Turkish fiancee, who was waiting for him outside the consulate he entered to complete the divorce proceedings from his first wife, and the pro-democracy organization Dawn that he founded.
With the dismissal of the prosecution, bin Salman was effectively saved from a possible punishment for the murder, which damaged his international standing for several years.
The lawsuit was also filed against the closest advisers of the Saudi prince - Saud al-Qahtani and Ahmed al-Asiri, who were mentioned as the ones who headed the operation.
Although it was a civil suit and not an indictment filed by the American authorities, the Saudi crown prince would have found himself in a legal tangle if the judge had allowed the proceeding to proceed.
Had he lost the lawsuit, bin Salman might have lost his financial assets in the United States.
Wrote critical columns about the Crown Prince.
Khashoggi (Photo: AP)
The President of the United States, Joe Biden, promised as a candidate that he would make Bin Salman a "leper" following the murder of Khashoggi, and upon taking office, published the conclusions of the American intelligence services according to which the Saudi crown prince approved the operation designed to strike or eliminate the journalist.
However, he avoided imposing sanctions on the young prince and even met with him last summer in Riyadh at the end of his visit to Israel in order to convince him to act against the rise in oil prices.
Despite the meeting, in which the two greeted each other with a fistfight, Saudi Arabia allied with Russia when it led the OPEC cartel to sharply cut oil output in October. The Biden administration was furious and promised to respond to what it saw as an attempt to hurt Democrats ahead of last month's congressional elections, but it has yet to act. Concrete measures against Riyadh Since then, Saudi Arabia has even expressed a willingness to help rebuild Ukraine and mediate in the release of foreign fighters captured by Russia, and Washington has welcomed this.
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