White House report claims Saudi Crown Prince was behind Jamal Kashoggi’s murder

On Friday, the United States government declassified an intelligence report that claims that the murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi was ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Until the Saudi kingdom had denied any responsibility in the fact, although he admitted the journalist’s death in 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, which he attributed to rebel intelligence operatives.

According to the report, manufactured in 2018 by the CIA but classified until this FridayMohammed bin Salman regarded Kashoggi, a journalist critical of the kingdom, as a “threat” and then approved the operation to assassinate him.

“We believe the crown prince has approved the operation in Istanbul to capture or kill journalist Jamal Kashoggi”says the report, quoted by the channel NBC.

“We base this consideration on the control that Mohammed bin Salman has exercised over the decision-making process in the Saudi kingdom since 2017, the participation of one of his direct advisers and a member of his security team in the act, as well as the violent practices of the Crown Prince to silence dissidents, ”he adds.

Kashoggi, an experienced Saudi journalist who had good relations with the Saudi kingdom, has become in recent years one of the main critics of the growing power of Mohammed bin Salman, who in 2017 became Minister of Defense and for many took the reins of the country even before acceding to the throne of his father, the old man Salmán bin Abdulaziz.

Consequently, Kashoggi first went into exile in the United States and then in Turkey, and continued to criticize the crown prince and the kingdom of a column in the Washington Post.

In 2018, she requested an appointment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to process the necessary papers to marry her fiance in Turkey. He visited the diplomatic headquarters twice and, on the second and final visit, he was brutally murdered and his body dismembered, according to subsequent investigations by the Turkish police.

The kingdom initially denied Kashoggi’s death and assured that the journalist had withdrawn from the consulate on his own, but in the face of mounting evidence of his murder, the persistence of his fiancée and international pressure, finally Riyadh admitted that he died in the diplomatic delegation and blamed the rebel intelligence agents for this fact.

In this way, the kingdom then tried and sentenced many of these suspected agents to death, and then commuted their sentences to life imprisonment.

Some of the findings of the CIA report released on Friday had already been disclosed by thenAlthough the government of President Donald Trump, which had close ties with Saudi Arabia, decided to keep it a secret and did not officially blame the kingdom for Kashoggi’s death.

In this regard, and in the face of a possible change in the position of the Biden administration, The Treasury Department was due to impose sanctions on Saudi General Ahmed al-Asiri on Friday., the kingdom’s former intelligence chief, and the Saudi Rapid Intervention Forces for their role in the assassination. Although Mohammed ben Salman is not sanctioned at the moment.

Other members of the Saudi government could also face sanctions in the future in connection with this case, as well as representatives of other countries accused of threatening dissidents and journalists, in what has been called the ” Khashoggi policy ”of the White House.

KEEP READING: