• The US has determined that Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader – Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – has immunity from a lawsuit filed by murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancée.
• US intelligence has said it believes Prince Mohammed ordered the killing.
• He denies any role in the killing of Mr Khashoggi.

A well-known Saudi critic, Mr. Khashoggi, was killed in October 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The killing was allegedly ordered by Prince Mohammed, according to US intelligence.

But the US State Department claimed in court documents that he enjoys immunity because of his new position as Saudi Arabia’s prime minister.

Hatice Cengiz, Mr. Khashoggi’s ex-fiancée, posted on Twitter that “Jamal died again today” as a result of the decision.

She was suing the crown prince in the US for her fiancée’s death along with the Mr. Khashoggi-founded human rights organisation Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn).

The US resident journalist and supporter of democracy Jamal Khashoggi was “kidnapped, shackled, drugged and tortured” and “assassinated,” according to the complaint against the Saudi ruler and his officials.

Agnes Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, stated: “It is immunity today. All of this results in impunity.”

In 2017, Prince Mohammed’s father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, appointed him crown prince. In September of this year, the 37-year-old was subsequently given the position of prime minister.

He disputes having had any part in Mr. Khashoggi’s murder.

As “the sitting leader of a foreign government,” according to Justice Department officials, the crown prince “enjoys head of state immunity from the jurisdiction of US courts as a result of that role.”

According to attorneys for the Justice Department, “the notion of head of state immunity is well established in customary international law.”

The Biden administration, however, was anxious to emphasise that the verdict did not establish innocence.

According to long-standing and well-established norms of customary international law, the State Department reached this decision legally, according to a written statement from the White House National Security Council.

It is unrelated to the merits of the case,

Saudi Arabia claimed that a group of agents dispatched to convince the former Washington Post journalist to return to the kingdom assassinated him in a “rogue operation.”

However, US sources claimed that the CIA had determined that MBS, as the prince is known, was complicit “with a medium to high degree of assurance.”

Prince Mohammed and his nation’s reputation were hurt by the murder, which sparked outrage around the world.

It also caused a significant deterioration in US-Saudi relations, with Mr. Biden pledging to designate Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” while running for president in 2019.

When he initially took office, Mr. Biden turned down an opportunity to speak with Mohammed bin Salman.

However, President Biden stated over the summer that he sought to “reorient” relations in advance of a trip to Saudi Arabia in July.

Following Mr. Khashoggi’s death, critics said his visit, during which he was photographed fist-bumping the crown prince, validated the Saudi regime.

It is “beyond ironic that President Biden has ensured MBS can escape accountability since it was President Biden who promised the American people he would do everything to hold him accountable,” Dawn executive director Sarah Leah Whitson stated on Twitter.

The son of exiled former Saudi security official Saad al-Jabri claims Prince Mohammed targeted his family and sent a hit squad to Canada to assassinate him, and that Thursday’s decision gave the Saudi leader “a licence to kill.”

The Biden administration, according to Khalid al-Jabri in statements cited by AFP, “broke its pledge to punish MBS for Khashoggi’s assassination, has not only shielded MBS from accountability in US courts, but has also rendered him more dangerous than ever with a licence to kill more detractors without consequences.”

Agnes Callamard of Amnesty International tweeted: “It is a profound betrayal. An additional Trump’s disdain came first. Then President Biden gave a fist bump. All the time, they had other options.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ national executive director, Nihad Awad, added that the Biden administration had “sold Jamal Kashoggi’s blood for Saudi oil.”

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