Saudis who killed journalist “Jamal Khashoggi” received paramilitary training in US

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that four Saudis involved in the 2018 assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi received paramilitary training in the United States last year under an agreement approved by the US State Department.

Writing for the Washington Post, Khashoggi, a Saudi-born American resident, was a vocal critic of the Saudi leadership, with whom he was once close.

He was assassinated on October 2, 2018, at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a team of agents sent from Saudi Arabia.

According to The New York Times, the training was provided by Tier 1 Group, a private American security group equity firm owned by Cerberus Capital Management, a move first authorised by the administration of former President Barack Obama in 2014, and was defensive in nature and devised to protect Saudi leaders.

Cerberus did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

In response to the Times report, State Department spokesman Ned Price said that under the law, the department cannot comment “on media reporting on allegedly licensed defense export licensing activity.”

Price also said that US policy toward Saudi Arabia would “prioritize the rule of law and respect human rights.”

Khashoggi, a US resident who wrote a column for the Washington Post criticizing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed and dismembered by a team of activists affiliated with the prince in October 2018 at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.

A US intelligence report said in February that the Crown Prince had approved an operation to capture or kill the journalist.

In a written response to questions from members of Congress about a senior Pentagon nominee for former President Donald Trump’s administration, Cerberus senior executive Louis Bremer last year described his company’s role in training four members of the Khashoggi assassination team.

But lawmakers never received replies because the Trump administration did not appear send them to Congress before withdrawing Bremer’s nomination, according to the Times, who said; Bremer provided it with the document.

According to the Times, Bremer said the US State Department and other government agencies are responsible for testing foreign forces trained on US soil.

The New York Times reports that there is no evidence that US officials who approved the training, or Tier 1 group officials, knew that the Saudis had a hand in the crackdown inside Saudi Arabia.

But it added that the Khashoggi case showed “how closely the United States is” intertwined with Saudi Arabia, “even to the point where its agents have committed horrific human rights abuses.”

The report says that the license to provide paramilitaries training for the Saudi Royal Guard was first issued in 2014 by the State Department under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.

The training then continued until the first year of employment Trump’s term.

A recent Yahoo News report by investigative journalist Michael Isikoff also revealed that the team of Saudi assassins who allegedly killed Khashoggi had stopped in the Egyptian capital to take the drugs that would have killed the invader.

The report said that the Gulf route jet stopped in Cairo on October 2, 2018 before finally arriving in Istanbul.

The report does not mention what drugs were used to kill Khashoggi, or who provided them to the killers.

Latest Indian news

Popular Stories

Latest Video