November 18 (UPI) – Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has received immunity from a US civil lawsuit accusing him of ordering the 2018 killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
In July, U. S. District Judge John Bates, who approved the civil lawsuit rate, sent a memo to Biden’s management asking whether bin Salman has sovereign immunity in the case.
The leadership has hinted that it is obliged to take any action in the case as long as bin Salman remains the country’s prime minister.
In late September, the aging Saudi King Salman denied national law to renounce one of his own titles and bring his 37-year-old son to the country’s office.
In the United States, the high-profile civil lawsuit made headlines again, increasing pressure on the Saudi royal circle of relatives to find a way to permanently protect the longtime king from prosecution in the case, diplomatic experts said.
The civil lawsuit, filed through Hatice Cengiz in October 2020, alleges that bin Salman and other Saudi officials hatched a “premeditated plot” to kill Khashoggi, who was tortured to death inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2018.
The Saudi regime has recently stepped up its crackdown on opponents, according to Saudi political activists living in exile.
In another high-profile case in the country, Salma al-Shehab, a holiday PhD student at the University of Leeds in Britain, arrested and sentenced to 34 years in prison after being accused of retweeting messages from prominent political dissidents.
The Saudi government’s ongoing human rights abuses in recent years have worsened its relationship with the United States.
The Khashoggi affair has more confusing international relations between longtime allies, with the United States less dependent on the small Middle Eastern nation’s oil but still offering it with military protection.
In July, U. S. President Joe Biden visited Saudi Arabia in a bid to renew relations and boost oil production, but Riyadh eventually cut production as rising energy costs sharply slashed U. S. economies. From the U. S. and around the world.
At the time, Biden said he told the crown prince he believed he was personally guilty of the killing when he broached the issue in an ongoing consultation with him and other government ministers at the royal palace in Al Salam.
“Which for Khashoggi is outrageous. “
This week, State Department lawyer Richard C. Visek presented a written explanation of the government’s ruling on the prince’s immunity, adding that the government “has no opinion on the merits of the existing prosecution and reiterates its unequivocal condemnation of the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi. . “
The Visek Declaration also noted that the Constitution protects the branch’s unilateral force in making foreign policy decisions.