Saudi prince approved killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, declassified US report reveals
- Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ‘approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’, the report said
- President Joe Biden’s administration announced sanctions and visa bans targeting Saudi Arabian citizens over the killing of Khashoggi
The intelligence report said that given Prince Mohammed’s influence, it was “highly unlikely” that the 2018 murder could have taken place without his green light. The killing also fit a pattern of “the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad”.
Khashoggi, a critic of Prince Mohammed who wrote for The Washington Post and was a US resident, was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, then killed and cut into pieces.
US President Joe Biden’s decision to order the release of a declassified version of the intelligence report – first completed under Donald Trump – was a sharp departure from his predecessor, who had vowed to keep working with Saudi Arabia due to the kingdom’s lavish purchases of US weapons and shared hostility toward Iran.
