WaPo Editorial Board: Congress wants accountability for Khashoggi. Trump breaks the law to stop them
Source: Washington Post
Congress wants accountability for Khashoggi. Trump breaks the law to stop them.
By Editorial Board
March 8, 2020 at 12:03 p.m. EDT
THE TRUMP administration has repeatedly defied the law in resisting efforts by Congress to enforce accountability for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The latest instance came last month, when the administration responded — a month late — to a requirement in last year’s defense authorization act for an unclassified report identifying anyone implicated in “the directing, ordering or tampering of evidence” in the case of Khashoggi, a Post contributing columnist who was dismembered by an official hit team in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.
The unclassified report delivered to Senate and House committees on Feb. 20 by the office of the director of national intelligence consisted of an assertion that it would not provide any unclassified information. An ODNI statement said it could not do so without “jeopardizing sources and methods” of intelligence — a response that flew in the face of the administration’s own previous public identification and sanctioning of individuals it said were responsible for Khashoggi’s murder.
The real reason for the failure to comply was evident in the classified annex that accompanied the report. U.S. officials told The Post’s Ellen Nakashima that the annex confirmed that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman played a direct role in the killing. That finding had previously been briefed to Congress by CIA Director Gina Haspel, and it was the conclusion of a public report by a U.N. investigation last year. But it has never been publicly confirmed by the administration, which continues to describe the Saudi ruler as a trusted ally.
The administration’s stonewalling flouts legal requirements in more than one respect. The State Department is required by human rights legislation to sanction foreign actors who have been credibly identified as responsible for human rights crimes. ODNI has now acknowledged — albeit in a classified context — that the crown prince was involved in a particularly heinous crime, the premeditated butchering of a journalist who was a U.S. permanent resident. Yet rather than follow the law, the Trump administration continues to cover for the Saudi strongman, whose offenses also have included the torture and imprisonment of women’s rights activists and medical doctor Walid Fitaihi, a U.S. citizen.
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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/congress-wants-accountability-for-khashoggi-trump-breaks-the-law-to-stop-them/2020/03/08/38369b5c-5f17-11ea-b29b-9db42f7803a7_story.html
