Bowing to the Biden administration’s insistence that the prince was legally immune in the case, a US federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the killing of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Despite what Bates called “credible allegations of his involvement in Khashoggi’s murder”, District of Columbia US District Judge John D. Bates heeded the US government’s motion to shield Prince Mohammed from the lawsuit.
Khashoggi was killed by a team of Saudi officials inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. His ‘crime’ was that as a columnist for The Washington Post, he had written critically of the harsh ways of Prince Mohammed, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler.
According to the US intelligence community, the Saudi crown prince had ordered the operation against Khashoggi. The issue opened a rift between the Biden administration and Saudi Arabia, which US is trying to undo.
