Yahoo News :
President Donald Trump’s administration is deciding whether to offer immunity to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was accused in a US federal court of trying to kill an exiled spy chief, The Washington Post reported Monday.
In August, Saad al-Jabri, who spent decades at the top of the Saudi Interior Ministry, sued Crown Prince Mohammed in a federal court in Washington, DC, claiming a hit squad was sent to kill him in Toronto, Canada, in October 2018.
Canadian border agents denied entry to the hit squad, known as the “Tiger Squad Defendants,” the complaint said.
According to The Post, lawyers for al-Jabri received a letter in November from the US State Department asking for their legal views on whether it would be right to grant immunity to the crown prince.
A major line of defense submitted by Crown Prince Mohammed’s lawyer, Michael Kellogg, in a motion to dismiss the claim filed on December 7, 2020, was that, as a world leader, the prince was immune from prosecution.
“The immunity of foreign officials from suit in the United States is governed by the doctrine of common-law foreign sovereign immunity,” Kellogg wrote in the 69-page filing.
The motion to dismiss did not explicitly counter any of al-Jabri’s allegations, and instead focused on undermining his legal arguments.
It is not clear if there was any communication between the crown prince’s lawyers and the State Department officials who were deciding whether to grant immunity.
A US State Department spokesperson told Insider the department does not comment on pending litigation. Lawyers for both al-Jabri and Crown Prince Mohammed did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Al-Jabri’s son Khalid, a cardiologist who lives in Canada, told The Post that offering immunity to Crown Prince Mohammed would be akin to sanctioning murder.
“If granted, the US would essentially be granting MBS immunity for conduct that succeeded in killing Jamal Khashoggi and failed to kill my dad,” he said, using a popular acronym for Crown Prince Mohammed.
Khashoggi, a US resident and writer for The Washington Post, was murdered in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2, 2018. The CIA has concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed likely ordered the killing.
President Donald Trump’s administration is deciding whether to offer immunity to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was accused in a US federal court of trying to kill an exiled spy chief, The Washington Post reported Monday.
In August, Saad al-Jabri, who spent decades at the top of the Saudi Interior Ministry, sued Crown Prince Mohammed in a federal court in Washington, DC, claiming a hit squad was sent to kill him in Toronto, Canada, in October 2018.
Canadian border agents denied entry to the hit squad, known as the “Tiger Squad Defendants,” the complaint said.
According to The Post, lawyers for al-Jabri received a letter in November from the US State Department asking for their legal views on whether it would be right to grant immunity to the crown prince.
A major line of defense submitted by Crown Prince Mohammed’s lawyer, Michael Kellogg, in a motion to dismiss the claim filed on December 7, 2020, was that, as a world leader, the prince was immune from prosecution.
“The immunity of foreign officials from suit in the United States is governed by the doctrine of common-law foreign sovereign immunity,” Kellogg wrote in the 69-page filing.
The motion to dismiss did not explicitly counter any of al-Jabri’s allegations, and instead focused on undermining his legal arguments.
It is not clear if there was any communication between the crown prince’s lawyers and the State Department officials who were deciding whether to grant immunity.
A US State Department spokesperson told Insider the department does not comment on pending litigation. Lawyers for both al-Jabri and Crown Prince Mohammed did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Al-Jabri’s son Khalid, a cardiologist who lives in Canada, told The Post that offering immunity to Crown Prince Mohammed would be akin to sanctioning murder.
“If granted, the US would essentially be granting MBS immunity for conduct that succeeded in killing Jamal Khashoggi and failed to kill my dad,” he said, using a popular acronym for Crown Prince Mohammed.
Khashoggi, a US resident and writer for The Washington Post, was murdered in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2, 2018. The CIA has concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed likely ordered the killing.
