US: Khashoggi’s death a human rights abuse
WASHINGTON – The State Department labeled Jamal Khashoggi’s murder a human rights violation committed by Saudi government agents in a report released Wednesday.
The report, which details human rights abuses around the world, makes no mention of whether Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman, played a role in The Washington Post columnist’s death.
The State Department’s top human rights official declined to say what role, if any, the CIA’s assessment of the case played in the account of Khashoggi’s death. The CIA concluded that the crown prince directed Khashoggi’s murder, according to multiple lawmakers briefed by the agency’s director, Gina Haspel.
“When we do these reports, we seek all relevant sources of information, including U.S. intelligence information,” Ambassador Michael Kozak, who leads the State Department’s Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Bureau, said Wednesday in a briefing on the annual report, which is required by Congress. Kozak said he would not discuss what intelligence he and other officials reviewed with respect to Saudi Arabia or any other country.
In its account of Khashoggi’s death, the State Department report says Saudi government agents “carried out the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2.” Khashoggi was a fierce critic of the crown prince, who is the country’s de facto ruler.
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman “pledged to hold all individuals involved accountable, regardless of position or rank” and 11 suspects have been indicted by the kingdom’s public prosecutor’s office, the human rights report notes. The Saudi government has not publicly named any of those 11 suspects or provided any detailed account of where its investigation stands.
Kozak defended the omission of the crown prince’s name in connection with Khashoggi.
“We can all have our suspicions or speculations, but our effort is fact-driven rather than opinion-driven,” he said. He repeated the Saudi government’s assertions that it is still investigating Khashoggi’s death.