Washington: A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Khashoggi murder case.
The court followed the Biden administration’s guidance that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has immunity as a head of government.
The Biden administration argued longstanding legal precedent on immunity for heads of government from other nations’ courts in some circumstances. The crown prince is therefore has immunity being the prime minister.
The Biden administration, invited the judge to offer an opinion on the matter. “Accordingly,” the court added, “the claims against bin Salman stand dismissed based on head-of-state immunity.”
Saudi sovereign King Salman had named Prince Mohammed, as prime minister weeks earlier. It was a temporary exemption from the kingdom’s governing code, which makes the king prime minister.
In its 25-page filing on Tuesday, the court said: “Despite the court’s uneasiness, then, with both the circumstances of bin Salman’s appointment and the credible allegations of his involvement in Khashoggi’s murder, the United States has informed the court that he is immune, and bin Salman is therefore ‘entitled to head of state immunity … while he remains in office.’”
The lawsuit filed by Hatice Cengiz, the fiancée of the columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, named Crown Prince as the prominent defendant.
A team of Saudi officials killed Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, had written critically of the harsh ways of Prince Mohammed,
The court also dismissed the cases against Saud al-Qahtani and Ahmed al-Assiri. Bothe named as the defendants in the lawsuit were senior Saudi officials at the time of the killing. The court ruled that the plaintiffs had not adequately established if the court should have jurisdiction over the matter.
Khashoggi’s fiancee and his rights group argued the move was a maneuver to shield the prince from the U.S. court.
