The top U.S. spy agency claims to have accidentally released the names of three men it assessed with high confidence were connected to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi on behalf of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman before pulling down the declassified report and scrubbing the trio from the second version.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence under President Biden released a four-page declassified report on Friday that assessed that bin Salman had “approved” the October 2018 operation in Istanbul, Turkey, “to capture or kill” Khashoggi, a U.S. resident who wrote for the Washington Post. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said the U.S. intelligence community based the assessment on bin Salman’s “control of decisionmaking in the Kingdom since 2017, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman’s protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad.”
The first version of the ODNI report included the names of 21 men about whom “we have high confidence that the following individuals participated in, ordered, or were otherwise complicit in or responsible for” Khashoggi’s death. Included on the list were Abdulla Mohammed Alhoeriny, Yasir Khalid Alsalem, and Ibrahim al Salim, whom the United States had not previously named in connection to the Saudi operation despite leveling sanctions on almost a dozen and a half Saudi operatives during the Trump administration. But the link to the report that included the three new names was swiftly pulled offline, and the link went dead Friday, though it was captured by the Wayback Machine. A new version of the report went up with the trio missing shortly thereafter. The hyperlink for the second version of the report calls it “v2,” indicating it is a second version.
“We put a revised document on the website because the original one erroneously contained three names which should not have been included,” an ODNI spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. The office, which oversees the nation’s 18 spy agencies, declined to answer further questions on why the three men had originally been included, why they had been pulled, and why they had not been sanctioned like the other 18 Saudis named in both versions.
The office for Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, declined the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
PSAKI DEFENDS LACK OF SANCTIONS OVER KHASHOGGI
Alhoeriny is reportedly the brother of Saudi General Abdulaziz bin Mohammed al Howraini, named by bin Salman in 2017 to lead the newly created State Security Directorate, which took over some of the responsibility of the Saudi Interior Ministry, including purported battles against domestic terrorism. CNN reported that Alhoeriny is described as an assistant chief of state security for counterterrorism in Saudi reports. It was not immediately clear who Alsalem and al Salim are.
Khashoggi was last seen on Oct. 2, 2018, when he went to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul reportedly to get the proper documentation for his upcoming wedding. U.S. intelligence concluded he was murdered, and his remains have never been recovered. Five people were sentenced to death in connection to Khashoggi’s killing, but last year, a Saudi court reduced their sentences to 20 years in prison after being forgiven by his family. Three others also got lesser sentences.
On Friday, the Treasury Department issued sanctions against Ahmad Hassan Mohammed al Asiri, Saudi Arabia’s former deputy head of general intelligence presidency, and on Saudi Arabia’s Rapid Intervention Force in connection with Khashoggi’s death, designating the two under the Global Magnitsky Act.
“Those involved in the abhorrent killing of Jamal Khashoggi must be held accountable,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Friday.
In 2018, the Trump administration had sanctioned the other 17 Saudis who appeared in the second version of ODNI’s declassified report, designating Saud al Qahtani, his subordinate Maher Mutreb, Saudi Consul General Mohammed Alotaibi, and 14 additional members of a Saudi operations team. “These individuals who targeted and brutally killed a journalist who resided and worked in the United States must face consequences for their actions,” then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said at the time.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded to critics who say the Biden administration’s actions did not go far enough.
“Let me first say that this was a horrific crime. The president has been consistent in reiterating that and his belief of that,” Psaki said during a Monday press conference, adding that “we also took a series of strong steps to impose on individuals directly involved in the operation that led to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.”
Psaki also said, “The report that was released on Friday through ODNI did not contain new information, [but] it was important to the president that it was released, and it abided by our legal obligations — and it wasn’t something that was done by the prior administration.” The naming of three other Saudis was certainly a new development, though, despite the subsequent deletion of their names.
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“The government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia completely rejects the … assessment in the report pertaining to the Kingdom’s leadership, and notes that the report contained inaccurate information and conclusions,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said on Friday, adding, “the crime was committed by a group of individuals that have transgressed all pertinent regulations … and the kingdom’s leadership took the necessary steps to ensure that such a tragedy never takes place again.”
