Deadline passes for US ruling on Khashoggi

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration was set to ignore a Friday deadline for giving the Senate a full accounting of the role of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in the brutal slaying of U.s.based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi four months ago.

The administration, which has consistently sought to shield Saudi rulers from blame, had until midnight Friday to answer senators’ questions about whether Prince Mohammed ordered the killing, as U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded, and what additional sanctions should be placed on the government in Riyadh.

The deadline was set by Democratic and Republican senators, who wrote the president on Oct. 10 — slightly more than a week after Khashoggi’s disappearance — calling for an investigation and invoking the Global Magnitsky Act that imposes sanctions on egregious abusers of international human rights. Under the rules, the president had 120 days to respond.

Administration officials contended, however, that the law was not binding and that the president was within his rights to ignore the senators’ demands.

A bipartisan group of senators, anticipating administration inaction, reintroduced a bill Thursday from late last year that would restrict arms sales to Saudi Arabia in response to the Khashoggi killing and the disastrous Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Khashoggi, a resident of Virginia, was strangled and dismembered inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Oct. 2. After weeks of denials, the Saudi government finally blamed the killing on “rogue” Saudi agents.

Adel Jubeir, Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, reiterated Friday that the crown prince did not order the killing and warned that attacking Saudi leadership was a “red line” that Americans should not cross.

Turkey and other countries will soon submit a formal request to establish a U.N. committee to investigate the killing of Khashoggi, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Friday.

Mevlut Cavusoglu’s comments came a day after U.N. human-rights expert Agnes Callamard said Saudi Arabia had undermined Turkey’s efforts to investigate the death.