Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally approved brutal Khashoggi murder, says US report

A demonstrator dressed as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with blood on his hands outside the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC

Credit: JIM WATSON /AFP

Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, personally ordered the murder and dismembered of Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to a declassified US intelligence briefing released on Friday.

The report asserts that Prince Mohammed directed the assassination in which Khashoggi, a Washington Post writer and US resident, was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, then killed and cut into pieces.

“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” said the four-page report, released by the Office for the Director of National Intelligence.

Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had “absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations”, it went on, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorisation. 

Khashoggi, who had written pieces critical of the Saudi regime in his weekly column and was living in self-exile, was suffocated and killed by a 15-man team of Saudis who had travelled to Istanbul in the days before the killing.

The 59-year-old’s body has never been discovered.

Jamal Khashoggi death | The unanswered questions

“The Crown Prince viewed Khashoggi as a threat to the Kingdom and broadly supported using violent measures if necessary to silence him,” the CIA report reads.

“Although Saudi officials had pre-planned an unspecified operation against Khashoggi we do not know how far in advance Saudi officials decided to harm him,” the agency says, claiming it was not aware of the plot ahead of time.

Just one month after the murder, the US Central Intelligence Agency concluded with high confidence that Prince Mohammed had ordered the assassination.

The 32-year-old prince, or MBS as he is known, has accepted Saudi Arabia’s overall responsibility in the killing of his vocal critic, but has always denied a personal link.

But, determined to maintain strong relations with Riyadh, former president Donald Trump refused to publicly hold the Saudi strongman responsible, even as the US government demanded the perpetrators be punished.

The decision marks a major re-set of relations between Washington and the oil-rich kingdom, which has been its closest Arab ally in the Middle East for decades.

Mr Biden has already ordered a review of US arms sales to Saudi Arabia and is scrutinising purchases made under Donald Trump.

Mr Biden must now navigate a complicated relationship with the US ally that remains a key geostrategic partner and the largest purchaser of US made weapons in the world.

The move is in line with campaign pledges made by Mr Biden, who has sought to ensure that American weapons are not used to further the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen, where its conflict with the Iranian-aligned Houthis has resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and widespread hunger.