No ‘Khashoggi ban’: Biden staff criticized for internet hosting MBS brother
The United States Biden administration is dealing with criticism from rights teams and anti-war advocates for its welcome of Saudi Arabia Prince Khalid bin Salman to Washington, DC, for high-level conferences this week.
Prince Khalid bin Salman is the brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also referred to as MBS. Over July 6-7, the prince met with US President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley and different senior US officers.
MBS was formally identified earlier this 12 months by US intelligence businesses as having sanctioned the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi hit squad in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2018. As a presidential candidate in 2020, Joe Biden had denounced Khashoggi’s assassination and pledged Saudi Arabia can be a “pariah”.
“It’s super hypocrisy on the a part of the Biden Administration to behave prefer it was going to remodel the connection with the Saudis,” stated Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, a girls’s peace advocacy group in Washington, DC.
“The Biden administration goes in opposition to the whole lot that it stated it was going to do,” Benjamin instructed Al Jazeera on Thursday.
She added that it stated it could have a unique relationship with Saudi Arabia. “Biden talked about MBS being a pariah, and the way he was going to guarantee that the US was not supporting amenities of their battle in Yemen.
“Yet in actuality, he places out the crimson carpet for MBS’s brother. He continues to promote weapons to Saudi Arabia. And he’s retaining data from the general public concerning the killing of Khashoggi,” Benjamin stated.
President Biden and his staff have walked a slim line between condemning Khashoggi’s homicide and sustaining a working relationship with Crown Prince bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. The US needs Saudi cooperation on a variety of challenges from Iran’s nuclear programme to the civil battle in Yemen and the disaster unfolding in Lebanon.
US spy businesses, in a declassified report ready by the CIA and launched on February 26, had assigned responsibility for the operation that killed Khashoggi to MBS.
With launch of the report, the State Department put greater than 70 Saudi nationals on a no-travel list and the Treasury Department imposed monetary sanctions on officers who have been straight concerned within the killing of Khashoggi. But neither MBS or his brother Prince Khalid have been included in these sanctions.
Khalid bin Salman was the Saudi ambassador to the US on the time of Khashoggi’s homicide. At the time he condemned “malicious leaks and grim rumors” surrounding Khashoggi’s disappearance on October 2, 2018, saying any claims that he was lacking within the Istanbul consulate “or that the Kingdom’s authorities have detained him or killed him are completely false and baseless”.
The Saudi authorities later admitted a staff of Saudi brokers had killed Khashoggi within the consulate.
“President Biden has talked recreation about holding Khashoggi’s murderers accountable, even promising throughout his marketing campaign to finish arms gross sales to Saudi Arabia,” Sarah Leah Whitson, government director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), stated in an op-ed printed in The Washington Post on July 6.
DAWN was founded by Khashoggi who was writing opinion columns for The Washington Post that have been essential of Saudi Arabia’s monarchy on the time he was killed.
“But not solely has his administration refused to sanction MBS — the chief architect of the homicide — and continued arms gross sales underneath the moniker of ‘defensive weapons’, it now looks as if it’s retaining a lid on essential details about Khashoggi’s killing,” Whitson wrote.
Several members of the MBS-backed “Tiger Squad” hit staff that killed Khashoggi had obtained paramilitary coaching within the US, and Egypt allegedly supplied a deadly substance used to kill Khashoggi, Whitson stated, citing stories.
By internet hosting Prince Khalid, who’s a “proxy” for MBS, the Biden administration is looking for to realize Saudi acquiescence to a renewed Iran nuclear weapons ban, and proceed worthwhile arms gross sales to the oil-rich kingdom, Whitson instructed Al Jazeera.
“On the one hand they wish to seem like taking a troublesome stance on the Saudis … and the opposite hand they’re internet hosting this man who ought to have been primary to implement the Khashoggi ban,” Whitson stated.
DAWN and Khashoggi’s fiancee Hatice Cengiz sued MBS and different Saudi officers in a US court docket in 2020 looking for damages and a jury trial. Prince Khalid has denied any position in Khashoggi’s homicide.
The CIA reviewed a 2018 telephone name wherein Prince Khalid instructed Khashoggi to go to Istanbul to gather marriage papers and guaranteed him it could protected to take action, based on Washington Post reporting.
Prince Khalid posted footage on his Twitter feed of his conferences with high US officers.
During my go to to the United States I held intensive talks on the Pentagon with @SecDef, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, and @DOD_Policy. pic.twitter.com/TEAOn4TY37
— Khalid bin Salman خالد بن سلمان (@kbsalsaud) July 7, 2021
“We mentioned the longstanding and historic partnership between our two nations, our navy and defense cooperation, and our mutual efforts to protect regional stability,” Prince Khalid stated on Twitter.
Khalid stated he had a “nice assembly” with Secretary Blinken “to debate the strategic Saudi-US partnership, evaluate the newest developments within the area, and discover methods to strengthen Saudi-US ties”.
State Department spokesman Ned Price stated bin Salman’s dialog with Blinken had targeted on regional security points, together with “efforts to attain a complete, nationwide ceasefire and transition to a political course of in Yemen, the necessity for financial reform and humanitarian reduction for the Lebanese folks, and different key bilateral points, together with human rights”.
Leaked paperwork from Riyadh that have been reported in May by the Gulf Institute point out the Biden administration has so far rebuffed a request by Saudi King Salman to permit MBS to go to Washington.
During the go to, Prince Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi vice minister of defence, met with US Special Envoy Tim Lenderking to debate the battle in Yemen. The US is on the lookout for Saudi cooperation in opening a Yemeni seaport and airport to permit entry for extra humanitarian provides.
Lenderking “burdened the necessity for continued Saudi engagement on Yemen, permitting house for nationwide complete ceasefire, adopted by a transition to a Yemeni political course of that might result in a everlasting answer to this battle”, Price stated.
