Ties with Saudis at stake as U.S. releases findings on killing
The United States has pledged to tell the world its conclusions on what role Saudi Arabia’s crown prince played in the brutal killing and carving up of a U.S.-based journalist, but as important is what comes next — what the Biden administration plans to do about it.
Ahead of the release of the declassified U.S. intelligence report, and announcement of any U.S. punitive measures, President Joe Biden spoke to Saudi King Salman on Thursday for the first time since taking office more than a month ago. It was a later-than-usual courtesy call to the Middle East ally, timing seen as reflecting Biden’s displeasure. Still, a White House readout made no mention of the killing or the report.
The conversation was overshadowed by the expected imminent release of findings on whether the king’s son approved the Oct. 2, 2018, killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s authoritarian consolidation of power, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in 2018 that the prince likely ordered the killing, a finding reported by news media but never officially released.
The White House said Biden on Thursday discussed with King Salman the two countries’ “longstanding partnership” and welcomed the kingdom’s recent releases of an advocate for women’s rights and some of its other political detainees.
The language came in contrast to Biden’s pledge as a candidate to make Saudi Arabia “a pariah” over the killing. The White House offered no immediate explanation for his milder tone with the king.
The killing drew bipartisan outrage. Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said Thursday he hopes Biden talks to the king “very straight about it, and very emphatically, and says that this is not acceptable.” Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said he understood the administration to be considering new sanctions to accompany release of the report. “So it’s a day of reckoning, but one that’s long overdue.”
The Saudi Arabia Embassy spokesman in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. Saudi officials have said Khashoggi’s killing was the work of rogue Saudi security and intelligence officials.
The prince said in 2019 he took “full responsibility” for the killing, but he denied ordering it.
U.S. intelligence findings are coming out more than two years after Khashoggi walked hand-inhand with his fiancée to the Saudi consulate in Turkey. He planned to pick up documents for their wedding.
Inside the consulate, Khashoggi died at the hands of more than a dozen Saudi security and intelligence officials and others who had assembled ahead of his arrival.
A Turkish bug planted at the embassy reportedly captured the sound of a forensic saw, operated by a Saudi military colonel who was also a forensics expert, carving up Khashoggi’s body within an hour of his entering the building. The whereabouts of his remains remain unknown.
Congress in 2019 demanded the release of the report’s findings, but the Trump administration refused. The Biden administration agreed to release a declassified version.
Saudi Arabian courts last year announced they had sentenced eight Saudi nationals to prison in Khashoggi’s killing.