Washington (GNB): Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday announced visa restrictions on 76 Saudi individuals who are involved in the killing of U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and harassment of perceived political dissidents abroad.
In a statement, U.S. State Secretary Antony Blinken announced the “Khashoggi Ban,” a new visa restriction policy.
” To that end, we have made absolutely clear that extraterritorial threats and assaults by Saudi Arabia against activists, dissidents, and journalists must end. They will not be tolerated by the United States.,” the statement read.
“The Khashoggi Ban allows the State Department to impose visa restrictions on individuals who, acting on behalf of a foreign government, are believed to have been directly engaged in serious, extraterritorial counter-dissident activities, including those that suppress, harass, surveil, threaten, or harm journalists, activists, or other persons perceived to be dissidents for their work, or who engage in such activities with respect to the families or other close associates of such persons. Family members of such individuals also may be subject to visa restrictions under this policy, where appropriate”, statement read.
To start with, Blinken said that the US Department of State has taken action pursuant to the Khashoggi Ban to impose visa restrictions on 76 Saudi individuals believed to have been engaged in threatening dissidents overseas, including but not limited to the Khashoggi killing.
U.S. intelligence report released on Friday confirms that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation to capture or kill a US based journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Khashoggi, 59, was a Saudi citizen living in Northern Virginia and writing columns for The Washington Post that were often critical of the Saudi monarchy. Khashoggi was once an adviser to the Saudi government and close to the royal family, but fell out of favor and went into self-imposed exile in the US in 2017. From there, he wrote a monthly column in the Washington Post in which he criticised the policies of Prince Mohammed.
He was killed during a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018. His body was dismembered and his remains have never been found, and a United Nations report released in 2019 said the murder had been carefully planned.
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