Biden Administration Seeks Delay Over MBS’ Immunity Decision

By Staff, Agencies

The Biden administration is seeking a 45-day delay in a court proceeding in which it has been asked by a US judge whether it believes Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman should be granted sovereign immunity in a case involving the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Representatives from the US justice department said in a legal notice filed on Friday that the department was seeking the extension after Saudi Arabia announced in a press release last week that MBS had been named prime minister.

Critics of the Saudi government said they believed the new designation was a maneuver designed to try to establish sovereign immunity protection for the 37-year-old prince, who is facing a civil case in the US for his role in the murder of Khashoggi.

The legal case, which is being heard in a district court in Washington DC, has been filed against MBS by Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancée, and DAWN, a pro-democracy group founded by the journalist before he was killed.

The case has put the Biden administration in a legal and diplomatic bind.

The US president entered the White House promising to make the crown prince accountable for Khashoggi’s murder and to make him a “pariah.”

But Biden has largely abandoned that pledge in favor of pursuing other political and foreign policy objectives.

In a trip to Jeddah this summer, he fist-bumped MBS even after his own administration released a declassified intelligence briefing last year that concluded the prince had likely ordered the Khashoggi killing.

MBS claimed he has taken responsibility for the murder but that he did not order the killing.

Human-rights lawyers have also argued against giving sovereign immunity protection precedence over other principles human rights principles.

Agnès Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said there were “far greater values at stake” than the immunity of a “possible sovereign that has proven repeatedly that he is prepared to violate the sovereignty of other states and international law.”

“The protection of the right to life, the prohibition of torture and enforced disappearance, international peace, the use of force on the territory of another state, principles of international justice and the protection of fundamental human rights should trump concerns of sovereign immunity,” Callamard said.

Sarah Leah Whitson, a lawyer and executive director of DAWN said the best thing the US government could do would be to refuse to weigh in on the matter. Any such decision would likely be seen as a sign to the court that the administration did not believe it had an interest in the case.

“MBS’s ploy to secure immunity by designating himself as PM should be rejected as an abuse of sovereign immunity. To allow tyrants to dodge prosecution for war crimes and grave abuses by title-washing will eviscerate universal jurisdiction laws all over the world,” she said.

Experts have also cautioned that much more is at stake for MBS than the civil case in Washington.