WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th November, 2022) The US State Department determines that Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman should be granted immunity in a US lawsuit brought against him by the fiancée of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to a letter.
"The State Department recognizes and allows the immunity of Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman as a sitting head of government of a foreign state," the letter stated, asking the Department of Justice to recommend immunity to the US district court.
The final decision will be made by Judge John D. Bates, who had asked the US government to file a statement of interest about the applicability of head-of-state immunity, among other issues.
The State Department said the determination did not imply a view on the merits of the lawsuit and reiterated its "unequivocal condemnation of the heinous murder."
Later in the day, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel defended the decision to allow the immunity for the Saudi prime minister as the "normal practice" of the US government that has been applied across many past US administrations with respect to a number of foreign leaders, including President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti in 1993, President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe in 2001, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India in 2014, and President Joseph Kabila in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018.
Patel added that he agrees with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby's assessment of the bilateral relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia as tense.
Khashoggi was strangled and dismembered in October 2018 by a team of Saudi agents inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where he was lured to complete paperwork for his upcoming marriage to Turkish citizen Hatice Cengiz. US intelligence found that the crown prince, who became the prime minister in September, had approved an operation in Istanbul to capture and kill Khashoggi.
