WASHINGTON – WHAT: On-line Press Conference Responding to Release of U.S. Intelligence Report on Murder of Washington Post Journalist Jamal Khashoggi
WHEN: TBD right after report is released
Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), an organization started by Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, will join the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the human rights group CODEPINK to host a virtual news conference when President Biden releases the U.S. intelligence report expected to conclude that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) ordered the 2018 brutal killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
In addition to the intel report, recently court documents filed in Canada and revealed by CNN provide another link between Khashoggi’s death and MBS. The two private jets used by the Saudi assassination squad that murdered Khashoggi were owned by a company that had been seized by the MBS.
“The DNI report will reveal what we have long known to be true: Mohammed Bin Salman played a central role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of DAWN. “President Biden should now fulfill his promise to hold MBS accountable for this murder by, at minimum, imposing the same sanctions on him as those imposed on his underlying culprits and ending the weapons transfers to Saudi Arabia that would be controlled by an unelected, brutal murderer.”
“Candidate Biden rightfully called Saudi Arabia a pariah state, and the policies of now President Biden should reflect that,” said CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin. “We are encouraged by Biden’s recent announcement that the U.S. will halt offensive weapons sales to the Saudis due to the devastating war in Yemen. But in light of the Yemen war, Khashoggi’s brutal murder, and regime’s repression of human rights at home, Biden should go further in recalibrating the U.S.-Saudi alliance.”
The city of Washington D.C. is planning its own tribute to the slain journalist. On January 14, D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto introduced a measure that seeks to rename the street in front of the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington, D.C.—New Hampshire Ave NW between Virginia Ave NW and F St NW—as “Jamal Khashoggi Way.”