Biden speaks with Saudi King Salman

Report on killing of Khashoggi expected soon

U.S. President Joe Biden held his first conversation with Saudi Arabia's King Salman on Thursday, a phone call that while pending had weighed heavily on the future relationship between the United States and a major partner in the Middle East.

The call was likely to be one of the final steps before the release of a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on U.S. intelligence findings related to the October 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

A White House readout of the call did not mention Khashoggi, but said Biden affirmed the importance the United States places on universal human rights and the rule of law. The President told King Salman he would work to make the bilateral relationship as strong and transparent as possible.”

The document is said to directly implicate the crown prince, in ordering the killing. It's release will be accompanied by “our further answer to how we will ensure that there is accountability for that murder,” Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told CNN last week.

Although the crown prince, known as MBS, is the country's de facto leader, the White House has made clear that he will not be its main Saudi interlocutor, as he was under President Donald Trump.

The call came as court documents, which were first reported by CNN and form part of a civil lawsuit in Canada, allege a pair of private jets which flew a Saudi hit squad to Turkey to murder Khashoggi were owned by a company that had been seized by Mohammed bin Salman. Court papers relating to the private jets say the ownership of Sky Prime Aviation was transferred to Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund in late 2017.

In October 2018, two Sky Prime Aviation jets carried a team of assassins to Turkey where they killed and dismembered Khashoggi, who was a Washington Post columnist and critic of the crown prince. The court papers establish an apparent link between the murder and the crown prince, who has vehemently denied any role in the killing and says it was a “heinous” crime. The kingdom has repeatedly insisted that the killing was carried out by a group of rogue Saudi agents.

“He would have been tracking (the company) and would've been aware of how it was used,” Dan Hoffman, the former director of the CIA's Middle East Division, told CNN.

“And it's just more potential evidence that he was in the know on this. Which has always been the contention.”

The documents linking the planes to the crown prince were filed by a group of Saudi state-owned firms suing a former Saudi official for embezzlement.