[ad_1]
The chairman of the US House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, called on the new director of national intelligence, Avril Haynes, to declassify a report on the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey in 2018.
On Friday, Schiff sent a letter to Heinz, recently approved by Congress to take control of the National Intelligence Department, to pressure him to reveal new information about Khashoggi’s assassination “without delay” to the consulate of his country in Istanbul by a Saudi security team.
The California Democrat posted a tweet containing the letter he sent to Hines, in which he said: “For a year the administration of (former President) Donald Trump refused to release a report on the responsibility of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. asked Director Hines to declassify this report. There will be responsibility and justice. ”
He added in the tweet: “Khashoggi’s brutal murder was a human rights violation.”
Khashoggi has lived in America since 2017 and writes for the Washington Post criticizing aspects of Saudi Arabia.
In October 2018, Khashoggi went to his country’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to obtain documents for the divorce of his Saudi wife to marry a Turkish woman, but he did not come out, and the intelligence services Turks revealed that he had been killed and his body. dismembered by a Saudi security team.
According to information obtained by the United States from the Turkish intelligence services, the CIA concluded that the operation had been carried out “by order” of the Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman.
But Saudi authorities have denied any responsibility for the crown prince and for ordering the assassination of dissident Khashoggi.
Last September, a Saudi court sentenced eight defendants, for a total of 124 years.
The sentences included 20 years’ imprisonment for each of the 5 defendants in the case, and the jail period for the other three ranged from 7 to 10 years, according to the Saudi prosecutor’s spokesperson.
Avril Haynes, director of national intelligence in the Biden administration, was asked if this would end the “chaos” of the Trump administration and report to Congress on the murder of Khashogi, to which she replied: “Certainly we obey the law ”.
“The importance of telling the truth and confronting influential people about their misconduct is at the heart of bipartisan concerns about a one-year deadline to brief Congress on a report related to Saudi Arabia’s accountability ( in the Khashoggi murder), ”Schiff said.
He added that this could be achieved by declassifying an attachment that was made available to Congress in February.
Source link