WASHINGTON (US) – President Joe Biden on Saturday said his administration would have an announcement on Saudi Arabia on Monday, after a US intelligence reported that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had given approval for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The Biden administration has been receiving flak, notably an editorial in the Washington Post, that the president should have taken a tough stand, when it comes to the crown prince, who was not getting sanctioned in spite of being blamed for approving Khashoggi’s murder.
When asked about punishing the crown prince, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, who is also known as MbS, Biden said: “There will be an announcement on Monday as to what we are going to be doing with Saudi Arabia generally.”
Biden, however, did not provide details.
But a White House official indicated that no new significant steps were expected.
The official said, “The administration took a wide range of new actions on Friday. The president is referring to the fact that on Monday, the State Department will provide more details and elaborate on those announcements, not new announcements.”
Khashoggi, a US resident who wrote opinion columns for the Washington Post critical of MbS policies, died out of an attack and was dismembered by a team of operatives, alleged to have links to the prince in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.
The Saudi government, which has dismissed any involvement by the crown prince, on Friday issued a statement rejecting the US report’s findings and reiterated its previous statements that Khashoggi’s killing was a heinous crime by a rogue group.
Among the steps that the United States took on Friday was the enforcement of a visa ban on some Saudis, who were believed to be involved in the Khashoggi killing and sanctions on others, which includes a former deputy intelligence chief, and which would freeze their US assets and generally bar Americans from dealing with them.