Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was in possession of the aviation company used to extricate Jamal Khashoggi’s assassins from Turkey at the time of his death, further cementing bin Salman’s connection to the killing, court documents show.
The documents are labeled “Top Secret” and were filed as part of a Canadian lawsuit. They show that ownership of Sky Prime Aviation, which had two of its private jets retrieve several of Khashoggi’s killers in 2018, was transferred to the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund a year before the murder, CNN reported on Wednesday.
“According to the instruction of His Highness the Crown Prince, immediately approve the completion of the necessary procedures for this,” a Saudi minister wrote about the orders of bin Salman, who is known by his initials MBS.
The documents were introduced by Saudi-controlled companies as part of a Canadian embezzlement lawsuit against Saad al Jabri, a former top intelligence official in the kingdom. Last year, Jabri filed a lawsuit against MBS in U.S. federal court alleging that just weeks after Khashoggi’s death, the crown prince dispatched a hit squad to assassinate him in Canada, where he fled in advance of a mass arrest of Saudi royalty, officials, and businessmen.
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Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist, was assassinated and reportedly dismembered by a 15-man team of assassins in October 2018. He was lured into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul before his murder, which prompted international outrage. While the United Nations in a 2019 report named Sky Prime as the aviation company that extracted the assassins in the hours after Khashoggi’s slaying, the Canadian court documents provide more evidence about the crown prince’s ties to the operation.
While the CIA determined that MBS personally ordered Khashoggi’s assassination, the crown prince denies he greenlighted the operation, although he has said he shoulders responsibility for it. Faisal Gill, who represents Khashoggi’s former fiance, Hatice Cengiz (who is also suing bin Salman), told CNN the documents represent a “direct line” from MBS to Khashoggi’s assassination.
“Any evidence that basically ties MBS and others, especially in a direct line way, which we believe this does, is extremely important,” Gill said.
“[The crown prince] wanted to use a company that he controls, in a fund that he absolutely controls in hopes that it would not get out,” the lawyer continued. “That to me is not only a direct line to him killing Jamal but also a direct line of him trying to cover it up using an aviation company that he absolutely has full control of.”
Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiance, filed the lawsuit against MBS late last year, seeking unspecified damages. Khashoggi was lured into the consulate under the guise that he was picking up the paperwork necessary to marry Cengiz, who is Turkish by birth. The lawsuit was filed under the Torture Victims Protection Act and the Alien Tort Statute, which allows non-U.S. citizens to file lawsuits in U.S. courts over allegations of torture or extrajudicial killings committed in foreign countries.
President Biden has taken a different tack toward U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia since taking office. Earlier this month, Biden said the United States would end support for all offensive operations against the Houthi insurgency in Yemen, including related arms sales to the kingdom.
Former President Donald Trump, on the other hand, worked to improve relations with Saudi Arabia during his tenure. He drew controversy when he signed an emergency order just months after Khashoggi’s death that permitted the U.S. to sell weapons to the kingdom by circumventing Congress.
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The Washington Examiner reached out to the State Department for comment about the court documents.
