{"id":115377,"date":"2021-02-27T15:52:52","date_gmt":"2021-02-27T07:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=115377"},"modified":"2021-02-27T15:55:13","modified_gmt":"2021-02-27T07:55:13","slug":"update-us-says-saudi-prince-approved-khashoggi-murder-but-spares-him-sanctions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=115377","title":{"rendered":"Update: US says Saudi prince approved Khashoggi murder but spares him sanctions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Saudi<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

 Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi (L) and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin <\/p>\n\n\n\n

WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The United States for the
first time publicly accused Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of
approving the gruesome murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi,
unveiling a raft of punitive measures but stopping short of targeting the
powerful heir apparent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prince, who is de facto ruler of the US ally and oil provider,
\u201capproved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi
journalist Jamal Khashoggi,\u201d said an intelligence report newly declassified
by President Joe Biden\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report said that given Prince Mohammed\u2019s influence, it was \u201chighly
unlikely\u201d that the 2018 murder could have taken place without his green
light. The killing also fit a pattern of \u201cthe crown prince\u2019s support for
using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Khashoggi, a US resident and critic of Prince Mohammed who wrote for The
Washington Post, was lured to Istanbul\u2019s Saudi consulate in October 2018,
then killed and cut into pieces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Treasury Department announced it was freezing assets and criminalizing transactions with a former intelligence official as well as the Rapid Intervention Force, an elite unit the report said \u201cexists to defend the crown prince\u201d and \u201canswers only to him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the report was released, Biden said that \u201cwe are going to hold
(Saudi Arabia) accountable for human rights abuses\u2026 it is outrageous what
happened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the United States stopped short of directly targeting the 35-year-old
crown prince, known by his initials MBS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In honor of the slain writer, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced
the \u201cKhashoggi Act\u201d that will ban entry into the United States of foreigners
who threaten dissidents or harass reporters and their families and
immediately placed 76 Saudis on the blacklist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have made absolutely clear that extraterritorial threats and assaults
by Saudi Arabia against activists, dissidents and journalists must end. They
will not be tolerated by the United States,\u201d Blinken said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blinken, questioned by reporters, said that \u201cthis is bigger than any one
person,\u201d explaining Biden is trying \u201cnot to rupture the relationship, but to
recalibrate to be more in line with our interests and our values.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An advocacy group founded by Khashoggi, Democracy for the Arab World Now, called on the president to impose sanctions on Prince Mohammed \u2014 with a number of lawmakers from Biden\u2019s Democratic Party also pushing for more action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe must also ensure that there are real consequences for individuals like
MBS; if not, autocrats around the world will get the message that impunity is the rule,\u201d said Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Saudi foreign ministry in a statement denounced the \u201cnegative, false
and unacceptable assessment\u201d and rejected \u201cany measure that infringes upon its leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Saudi government, which initially said it had no information on
Khashoggi, says it accepts responsibility for the killing but casts it as a
rogue operation that did not involve the prince.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden\u2019s decision to release the report \u2014 first completed under Donald
Trump \u2014 was a sharp departure from his predecessor, who had vowed to keep working with Saudi Arabia due to the kingdom\u2019s lavish purchases of US weapons and shared hostility toward Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biden spoke late Thursday with 85-year-old King Salman after the White
House made clear he had no intention of speaking to the crown prince, who by contrast had formed a friendship with Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A veteran Saudi journalist who had gone into self-exile, Khashoggi was
told by Saudi Arabia\u2019s ambassador to the United States to go to the kingdom\u2019s Istanbul consulate if he wanted to obtain documents for his forthcoming marriage to a Turkish woman, Hatice Cengiz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within minutes of entering the building on Oct 2, 2018, the 59-year-
old was strangled and his body dismembered by a 15-member team allegedly sent from Riyadh under the direction of a top aide to Prince Mohammed, Saud al-Qahtani.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The intelligence report said seven of the 15 Saudis came from the Rapid
Intervention Force, which it said had earlier acted to suppress dissent in
the kingdom and abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Central Intelligence Agency had quickly concluded that Prince Mohammed ordered the assassination but Trump refused to release the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A US official said it was \u201cobviously reality\u201d that the new administration
will still have to deal with the prince, who is also defense minister, on
issues including oil, Iran and Yemen, where Biden has cut support for Saudi\u2019s devastating offensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Few observers of Saudi Arabia believe the murder could have taken place
without the knowledge of Prince Mohammed, a calculating strongman who has jailed critics and locked up competing factions in the royal family. — NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi (L) and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The United States for thefirst time publicly accused Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ofapproving the gruesome murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi,unveiling a raft of punitive measures but stopping short of targeting thepowerful heir apparent. The prince, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[208,217],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115377"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}