Saudi authorities eventually acknowledged Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, but insisted it was carried out by rogue agents without orders from Riyadh. Credit… Mohammed Al-Sheikh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Since entering the White House, President Biden has refused to meet or even speak with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, seeking to ostracize him for the gruesome killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in 2018. .
But that objection fell away on Friday when Mr. Biden and Prince Mohammed met face-to-face during Mr. Biden’s first trip to Saudi Arabia for a regional summit focused on oil and Iran.
The two leaders briefly discussed the case, according to US and Saudi officials, but effectively agreed to disagree on Prince Mohammed’s culpability before announcing a slew of initiatives aimed at highlighting the close partnership between their countries.
And that ended the latest high-level effort to bring Prince Mohammed to justice for the murder.
The conversation between the two leaders took place behind closed doors, and slightly different accounts emerged.
Mr. Biden told reporters that he confronted Prince Mohammed privately about what he called an “outrageous” killing early in their meeting, even telling the prince that Mr. Biden held him responsible for it.
“I made my vision crystal clear,” Mr. Biden said.
Separately, Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, described to reporters a less contentious human rights conversation in which the killing was briefly mentioned.
Calling the killing a “terrible mistake”, Mr al-Jubeir said those responsible for the crime had been punished, that the United States and Saudi Arabia had moved on and that the United States was in no position to criticize, recalling the torture of prisoners in Iraq’s Abu Garib by American soldiers.
Mr. Khashoggi was one of Saudi Arabia’s most prominent journalists and for years was considered an insider who could effectively explain the kingdom’s point of view.
But after Prince Mohammed came to power in 2015, Mr Khashoggi criticized the prince’s lack of tolerance for dissent and, fearing arrest, fled to the United States, where he wrote columns for The Washington Post criticizing the initiatives of the prince.
In October 2018, Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents he needed to marry his Turkish fiancée. He never came out.
Turkish officials and a UN investigator later described how he confronted a squad sent by Saudi Arabia, who strangled him and injected him with a sedative, killing him. A medical examiner then dismembered his body and a body double wandered around Istanbul dressed in Khashoggi’s clothes in a failed attempt to convince the world that he was still alive.
For weeks, Saudi authorities denied the kingdom was behind his crime, but the perpetrators were caught on camera and identified, some of them closely linked to Prince Mohammed.
Saudi authorities eventually acknowledged Mr Khashoggi’s murder, but insisted it was carried out by rogue agents with no such orders from Riyadh.
Although Prince Mohammed said he had no prior knowledge of the plot, the assassination left a deep stain on his efforts to present himself as a visionary reformer. The trial in Saudi Arabia, which found eight men guilty in connection with the murder, failed to quell international outrage.
Mr Khashoggi’s killing was the main reason Mr Biden vowed on the campaign trail to treat the Saudis “like the pariahs they are”.
At the White House, he authorized the release of a CIA assessment that said the prince had authorized the operation that led to Mr. Khashoggi’s death. Mr Biden also refused to speak to Prince Mohammed, saying his own doppelgänger was the king.
Until Friday, that is, when Mr. Biden sat down with Prince Mohammed to discuss oil supplies, regional security and other issues.
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