Washington: A US court Friday called "a stuff of Tom Clancy Novel" while dismissing a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that accused him of ordering an operation to kill one of the Kingdom's former top intelligence officials.
In a 4o-page ruling, Judge Timothy Kelly said Saad al-Jabri, who served as the Kingdom’s spy chief until he fled in 2017, failed to prove that Kelly's Washington Court had jurisdiction in the case, which was also brought against a dozen other Saudi Arabians and MiSK, the crown prince's foundation, according to Middle East Eye.
Among other allegations, Jabri contended that Mohammed bin Salman sent the secretive "Tiger Squad" special unit to kill him in Canada in October 2018, the same month that the team killed Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Jabri’s lawyers argued that, given the close ties Jabri had developed with the US intelligence community, the crown prince “purposefully targeted” the United States because his alleged attempt to kill the former spy chief was meant to disrupt US-Saudi intelligence sharing, Middle East Eye said in its report.
The Court however rejected all these claims and dismissed the case.
Meanwhile, Lawyers for Mohammed bin Salman told a court on Monday the crown prince's appointment as Prime Minister ensured him immunity from prosecution in any case, including the one over the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The lawsuit was filed jointly by Cengiz and a human rights group founded by Khashoggi, and sought unspecified damages against the crown prince, known in the West as MbS. It also named more than 20 other Saudis as co-defendants, according to Reuters.
Mohammed bin Salman, the de-facto ruler of the Kingdom, was earlier Deputy Prime Minister, with King Salman as the Prime Minister. He was also Defence Minister of Saudi Arabia. The King however appointed him Prime Minister by a decree issued last week.
"The Royal Order leaves no doubt that the Crown Prince is entitled to status-based immunity," lawyers for the prince said in a petition requesting a federal district court in Washington dismiss the case, citing other cases where the United States has recognised immunity for a foreign head of state.
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