U.S. backs immunity for Saudi leader in lawsuit over murder

ISTANBUL — The Biden administration has declared that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman should be granted immunity in a U.S. legal case over his role in the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, effectively blocking another effort to hold the kingdom’s leader accountable for the grisly crime.

Khashoggi was a wellknown Saudi journalist who fled Saudi Arabia for the United States and published columns in the Washington Post criticizing Mohammed’s policies.

In October 2018, Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by a team of Saudi agents inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where he had gone to obtain papers he needed to marry his Turkish fiancee.

U.S. intelligence concluded that Mohammed had ordered the operation.

Mohammed, 37, became prime minister in September, formalizing the power he had wielded for years as Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, although his elderly father, King Salman, remains the official head of state.

In a letter to the Justice Department on Thursday, the State Department said Mohammed should be “immune while in office” as the head of Saudi Arabia’s government, referring to his role as prime minister.

Mohammed has said repeatedly that he had no prior knowledge of the plot against Khashoggi but that he accepted symbolic responsibility for it as the nation’s de facto ruler.

The letter said the State Department did not take a position on the suit itself and reiterated “its unequivocal condemnation of the heinous murder” of Khashoggi. But it asked the Justice Department to formally request that the federal court in Washington, where the case was filed, grant Mohammed legal immunity. The final decision will rest with the presiding judge.

The action by the Biden administration angered human rights activists, who say that failing to punish Mohammed, widely known as MBS, for the killing of a high-profile journalist could encourage other autocrats to do the same.

“Caving into M.B.S.’ immunity ploy — when silence was an option for the administration — not only rewards M.B.S. for his intransigence, including continued attacks on activists in the U.S., but signals GO to tyrants around the world,” Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN, a human rights group co-founded by Khashoggi, wrote on Twitter.

There was no immediate comment from the Saudi government.