(GNB, Washington): President Biden spoke with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Thursday, their first phone call since Biden’s inauguration.
The conversation took place before the expected release of a U.S. intelligence report on the killing of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi.
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.
Saudi Arabia initially denied knowledge of what happened to Khashoggi. But in the face of intense international pressure, the kingdom admitted that Khashoggi was killed in a “rogue” extradition operation gone wrong, but it denied any involvement by the crown prince. Five men given the death penalty for the murder had their sentences commuted to 20 years in jail after being forgiven by Khashoggi’s family.
A classified version of the report was completed shortly after Khashoggi was lured into a Saudi Consulate in Turkey and killed by a team of assassins on Oct. 2, 2018. But the Trump administration withheld the findings, reflecting the former president’s embrace of the up-and-coming crown prince as the presumptive heir to the kingdom’s throne even after Khashoggi’s brutal slaying.
The White House readout of Thursday’s call does not mention Khashoggi, but says Biden “affirmed the importance the United States places on universal human rights and the rule of law” and told King Salman “he would work to make the bilateral relationship as strong and transparent as possible.”
The report’s release is part of Biden’s policy to realign ties with Riyadh after years of giving the Arab ally and major oil producer a pass on its human rights record and its intervention in Yemen’s civil war.
White House spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters on Wednesday that Biden would only communicate with the Saudi king and said the declassified Khashoggi report was being readied for release soon.
A person familiar with the issue told Reuters that the report’s release was awaiting the call. The release also was delayed as the crown prince underwent surgery earlier this week, Reuters reported.
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