Critics worry Saudi prince may use PM title as legal defence
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Alaina
- . October 1, 2022
- . Update: November 11, 2022 12:32 am
This week, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was given the new position of prime minister, which may have more significance outside of the kingdom where he already holds a significant influence.
The appointment was made by royal decree ahead of a deadline for the administration of US President Joe Biden to comment on whether Prince Mohammed meets the requirements for protection from lawsuits brought before US courts.
In court documents, his attorneys have maintained that because he “sits at the top of Saudi Arabia’s government,” he is entitled to legal protection.
Human rights advocates and opposition politicians instantly theorised that Prince Mohammed’s appointment as prime minister was a blatant attempt to support the immunity defence and avoid judicial exposure.
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Khashoggi’s founding non-governmental organisation (NGO), Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), executive director Sarah Leah Whitson, told AFP that it was a “last-ditch effort to conjure up a new title for him” or “a title-washing ruse.” Inquiries about the action received from the Saudi government were not answered.
Two years after Khashoggi’s passing, in October 2020, DAWN and Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, filed a case in the US charging Prince Mohammed of being a part of a “plot” that resulted in Khashoggi being abducted, bound, drugged, tortured, and killed.
The Saudi government denies Biden’s claim that Prince Mohammed approved the operation against Khashoggi, which was revealed in a declassified intelligence dossier released last year. Beyond Khashoggi, Prince Mohammed faces legal threats in US courts.
Additionally, he was mentioned in a lawsuit brought by Saad al-Jabri, a former top intelligence official who lost favour when Prince Mohammed manipulated events to take the throne as first in line in 2017.
In that accusation, Prince Mohammed is charged with first trying to entice Jabri back to Saudi Arabia from exile in Canada before allegedly “deploying a hit squad” to assassinate him there. The plot was thwarted when the majority of the would-be assassins were turned away at the border.
In yet another instance, Lebanese journalist Ghada Oueiss accused Prince Mohammed of taking part in a plot to hack her phone and spread “stolen personal photographs” in an effort to discredit her and stop her from covering human rights concerns.
In recent years, numerous such lawsuits have been filed against the 37-year-old de facto leader of the nation that exports the crudest, most notably because of the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the country’s consulate in Istanbul, which briefly made him unpopular in the West.
