A newly declassified intelligence report alleges that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation to “capture or kill” Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, shedding new light on his grisly 2018 murder.
“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” the executive summary of the report states.
The central conclusion of the report was widely expected given that intelligence officials were said to have reached it soon after the brutal Oct. 2018 murder of Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince’s authoritarian consolidation of power.
Still, since the finding had not been officially released until now, the public assignment of responsibility amounted to an extraordinary rebuke of the ambitious 35-year-old crown prince and was likely to set the tone for the new administration’s relationship with a country President Joe Biden has criticized but which the White House also regards in some contexts as a strategic partner.
The report was released one day after a later-than-usual courtesy call from Biden to Saudi King Salman, though a White House summary of the conversation made no mention of the killing and said instead that the men had discussed the countries’ longstanding partnership. The kingdom’s state-run Saudi Press Agency similarly did not mention Khashoggi’s killing in its report about the call, rather focusing on regional issues such as Iran and the ongoing war in Yemen.
Khashoggi had visited the Saudi consulate in Turkey planning to pick up documents needed for his wedding. Once inside, he died at the hands of more than a dozen Saudi security and intelligence officials and others who had assembled ahead of his arrival.
Surveillance cameras had tracked his route and those of his alleged killers in Istanbul in the hours leading up to his killing.
A Turkish bug planted at the consulate reportedly captured the sound of a forensic saw, operated by a Saudi colonel who was also a forensics expert, dismembering Khashoggi’s body within an hour of his entering the building. The whereabouts of his remains remain unknown.
The prince said in 2019 he took “full responsibility” for the killing since it happened on his watch, but denied ordering it. Saudi officials have said Khashoggi’s killing was the work of rogue Saudi security and intelligence officials. Saudi Arabian courts last year announced they had sentenced eight Saudi nationals to prison in Khashoggi’s killing. They were not identified.
On the way to Texas to survey storm damage with the president and first lady, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that President Biden and other officials raised “concerns we have about human rights abuses and steps that we expect the government and officials in the country to take moving forward, and certainly that was a part of the conversation.”
After the report was released Friday, the State Department announced the creation of the “Khashoggi Ban,” a new policy to restrict the visas of people who act on behalf of a foreign government to threaten, suppress or harm journalists, their families or others perceived to be disloyal.
Already, the U.S. has sanctioned 76 Saudi individuals under the new policy, both for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and for other incidents, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
“As a matter of safety for all within our borders, perpetrators targeting perceived dissidents on behalf of any foreign government should not be permitted to reach American soil,” Blinken said.
The announcement of the new visa restrictions was the first concrete step from the Biden administration in response to Khashoggi’s death, which the president has promised would “not be in vain.”
President Biden spoke with King Salman of Saudi Arabia on Thursday, but the White House did not say whether they spoke about Khashoggi or the report. According to a readout of the call, the president did note the importance of “universal human rights and the rule of law.”
Other lawmakers reacted to the release of the report – Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the House Intelligence Committee chairman, said that he was grateful to Biden and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines for its declassification, but said that “it should not have taken this long for the United States to publicly share what we knew about the brutal murder of a U.S. resident and journalist.”
“As the Crown Prince continues to demonstrate no remorse for his action sand to shield senior Saudi officials from accountability for their role in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, the Biden Admin will need to follow this attribution of responsibility with serious repercussions against all of the responsible parties it has identified, and also reassess our relationship with Saudi Arabia,” he added.
“We must ensure that if foreign governments target journalists simply for doing their jobs, they are not immune to serious repercussions and sanctions, because restoring confidence in American leadership requires we act in accordance with the values that have long set America apart,” Schiff said.
Senate Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) echoed Schiff’s sentiments: “For too long, the United States failed to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for the brutal murder of journalist, dissident, and Virginia resident Jamal Khashoggi. I’m encouraged to see the new administration taking steps to rectify that by releasing this long-overdue congressionally mandated report into his killing.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
