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Hawkish Republican Senator Tom Cotton has agreed with the Biden administration’s decision to grant sovereign immunity to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) over journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s 2018 murder.
“What the administration has touted this week in granting sovereign immunity to Mohammed bin Salman is in keeping with the practice of custom of lawsuits involving foreign heads of state,” Cotton (R-Ark.) told Fox News on Sunday. “It would have been a major break if those customs did not grant that kind of immunity.”
The US State Department on Thursday gave bin Salman immunity from the lawsuit despite Joe Biden’s earlier promise to hold the de facto Saudi ruler accountable for the crime.
Citing its constitutional authority as well as customary international law, the State Department said, “Prime Minister bin Salman as a sitting head of government is immune while in office from the jurisdiction of the United States District Court in this suit.”
Amnesty International on Friday condemned the Biden administration and called the act “a deep betrayal.”
“The US government should hang its head in shame. This is nothing more than a sickening, total, deep betrayal,” Amnesty’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard said in a statement.
“First the evidence of the Crown Prince’s involvement in Jamal Khashoggi’s murder was disregarded by President Trump, then President Biden’s fist bump — it all suggests shady deals made throughout.”
The US intelligence community previously concluded the killing of Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident, was ordered by the crown prince.
But Cotton claimed other regimes had done worse, and that Washington could not be too fastidious with its foreign partners.
“Saudi Arabia is far from the world’s worst abuser of human rights,” Cotton claimed on Fox News.
“Look, if we didn’t have allies and partners who don’t always share our political systems or our cultural and social sensibilities, we wouldn’t have any allies and partners,” he said.
Khashoggi, who was murdered and dismembered by a Saudi “hit squad” at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, used to be a vocal critic of the Saudi regime and the crown prince.
According to reports, he was lured into the diplomatic mission under the pretext of being provided with papers for his wedding. He was suffocated and dismembered while his fiancée waited outside for him.
Biden vowed during his presidential campaign to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” following Khashoggi’s killing, but he reversed course in July as he traveled to the country and gave a fist bump to bin Salman.
