District Court Judge John Bates gave the US government until August 1 to declare its interests in the civil case or tell the court it has no opinion on the matter. The administration’s decision could have a profound effect on the political case and comes as Joe Biden faces criticism for abandoning a campaign promise to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah”. The US president is set to meet the Saudi crown prince later this month when he makes his first trip to Riyadh since entering the White House. The civil complaint against Prince Mohammed, filed by Cengiz in federal district court in Washington in October 2020, alleges that he and other Saudi officials acted in “conspiracy and intent” when Saudi agents kidnapped, bound, drugged, tortured and killed Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Khashoggi, a former Saudi spy who had defected from the kingdom and lived in Virginia, was an outspoken critic of the young crown prince and was actively trying to counter Saudi online propaganda at the time he was killed. After years of inaction against Prince Mohammed by Donald Trump, who was president when Khashoggi was killed, the Biden administration moved to release an unclassified US intelligence report in 2021, shortly after Biden entered the White House, which ended concluded that Prince Mohammed was likely to have ordered Khashoggi’s murder. At the time the report was released, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said the kingdom’s government “categorically rejects what is stated in the report given to Congress.” While Saudi Arabia said it was conducting a trial against the strike group responsible for the gruesome killing, the process was widely condemned as a fraud and some of the group’s most senior members were held in a state security compound in Riyadh. Other possible avenues of justice have been blocked for political reasons. A Turkish prosecutor in March ended a long-running trial in absentia against Khashoggi’s killers, in a move seen as part of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s efforts to improve relations with Prince Mohammed. The Saudi prince claimed responsibility for the assassination on behalf of the Saudi government, but denied any personal involvement in planning the assassination. For supporters of Genghis, who has been an outspoken advocate for justice in Khashoggi’s murder, any move by the US government to seek to grant the crown prince sovereign immunity in the case would represent a betrayal of Biden’s promise to hold Saudi Arabia accountable. “It would be absurd and unprecedented for the administration to protect him. It would be the final nail in the coffin for attempts to hold Khashoggi’s killers accountable,” said Abdullah Alaoudh, director of research at Dawn, a nonprofit promoting democracy in the Middle East founded by Khashoggi and a co-plaintiff in the case against of the successor. Judge Bates said in an order released Friday that he will hold a hearing on Aug. 31 after motions to dismiss the civil case by Prince Mohammed and others. The motions to dismiss the civil case are based on claims by lawyers for Prince Mohammed that the D.C. court lacks jurisdiction over the crown prince. “In the court’s view, some of the grounds for dismissal advanced by the defendants may implicate the interests of the United States. Additionally, the court’s resolution of the defendants’ motions may be aided by knowledge of the United States’ views,” Bates said. The judge said he was specifically calling for the US government to file a statement of interest regarding the application of the so-called state doctrine, which states that the US must refrain from reviewing the actions of another foreign government in its courts. the interaction of this doctrine with a 1991 law that gives Americans and non-citizens the right to bring legal claims in the US for torture and extrajudicial killings committed in foreign countries; the applicability of head of state immunity in this case; and the US view on whether Saudi Arabia’s sovereign interests could be undermined if the case proceeds. Agnès Callamard, the head of Amnesty International, who investigated Khashoggi’s killing in her previous role as the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, said it was “ridiculous” that Prince Mohammed, whom she called a “virtually sovereign”, may benefit from head of state immunity after the US itself had publicly concluded that it likely approved the operation to kill Khashoggi. Noting that Prince Mohammed was not a king, he added: “MBS [as the crown prince is known] he is not the ruler of Saudi Arabia and the US should not recognize him as head of state. Doing so would give him power and legitimacy that he certainly does not deserve and hopefully will never receive.” Cengiz could not immediately be reached for comment. The Saudi embassy in Washington was not available for comment.
