Khashoggi killing green-lighted by Saudi prince: US

WASHINGTON • Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia approved the assassination of The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, according to an intelligence report that the Biden administration released that offered the world a reminder of the brutal killing.

An elite team of operatives helped carry out the killing, the report released on Friday said. The team reported directly to Crown Prince Mohammed, who cultivated a climate of fear that made it unlikely for aides to act without his consent, according to the report.

It omitted the brutal details of Mr Khashoggi's death, including the dismemberment of his body with a bone saw after Saudi officials lured him to their consulate in Istanbul.

But the Biden administration took no direct action against the Crown Prince, who is the de facto ruler of the kingdom. Instead, travel and financial sanctions have been imposed on other Saudis involved in the killing and on members of the elite unit of the Royal Guard, who protect the Crown Prince.

The administration concluded that it could not risk a full rupture of its relationship with the kingdom, relied on by the United States to help contain Iran, counter terrorist groups and broker peaceful relations with Israel.

Cutting off Saudi Arabia could also push its leaders towards China.

Lawmakers of both parties praised the release of the report, but some Democrats, including Representative Adam Schiff of California, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, spoke out in dismay that the administration stopped short of more severely punishing Crown Prince Mohammed for the killing of Mr Khashoggi, a legal permanent resident of Virginia state who was critical of the Saudi government in columns he wrote for The Post.

"There are ways to bring about more personal repercussions without completely rupturing the relationship," Mr Schiff said in an interview.

Still, he added: "This is an official US government statement that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has blood on his hands, and that blood belongs to an American resident and journalist. And I think that's very powerful."

The 2018 assassination of Mr Khashoggi and the brutality of his death, detailed in news reports at the time, shocked the world.

And it disgusted US officials, including then Central Intell

igence Agency (CIA) director Gina Haspel, according to current and former intelligence officials.

Ms Haspel and the other US officials listened to a recording obtained by Turkish intelligence that not only captured Mr Khashoggi's struggle against Saudi agents and his killing, but also caught the sounds of the saw being used on his body.

Much of the evidence that the CIA used to conclude that Crown Prince Mohammed was culpable in Mr Khashoggi's killing remains classified.

But the report's disclosure is the first time that the US intelligence community has made its conclusions public, and the declassified document is a powerful rebuke of the Crown Prince, a close ally of the Trump administration, whose continued support of him prompted international outrage.

The release of the report signalled that US President Joe Biden, unlike his predecessor, would not set aside the killing of Mr Khashoggi and that his administration intended to try to isolate the Crown Prince.

"We assess that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi," said the report, issued by Mr Biden's Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.

The decision to rebuke the Saudis without punishing Crown Prince Mohammed directly was the result of a weeks-long debate among aides to Mr Biden, who during last year's campaign called Saudi Arabia a "pariah" state with "no redeeming social value".

Two years earlier, Mr Biden called out the Trump administration for its inaction after Mr Khashoggi's death, calling it "embarrassing" and "dangerous".

Mr Biden's newly formed national security team advised him that he could not bar the heir to the Saudi crown from entering the United States, or weigh criminal charges against him, without breaching the relationship with a key Arab ally, according to officials.

They said a consensus emerged inside the White House that the cost of such a breach, in terms of Saudi cooperation on counter-terrorism and in confronting Iran, was simply too high.

NYTIMES