WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. court has ruled against two close aides to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a lawsuit brought by a former Saudi intelligence official who claims he survived a Saudi plot to muzzle him. He gave them until early November to begin submitting evidence. he.
The order is among a series of recent decisions that suggest U.S. courts are becoming more open to lawsuits that hold foreign powers accountable for rights violations, legal experts and advocates say. That’s what it means. That’s after decades when U.S. judges tended to dismiss these cases.
A long-running lawsuit by former Saudi intelligence official Saad al-Jabri accuses Saudi Arabia of attempting to assassinate him in October 2018. Saudi Arabia says the allegations are unfounded. That same month, the United States, the United Nations and others claimed that Crown Prince Mohammed’s aides and other Saudi officials had killed Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S.-based journalist who had criticized the crown prince in a Washington Post column. It’s the same month.
Al-Jabri’s lawsuit alleges that the plot against him involved at least one of the same officials, former royal adviser Saud al-Qaftani, who has been sanctioned by the Biden administration for his alleged involvement in Khashoggi’s murder. I am doing it.
The ruling joins six recent rulings that could once again make U.S. courts more tolerant of lawsuits accusing human rights abuses by foreign governments and officials, even when the wrongdoing occurred abroad. , giving hope to rights groups and dissidents.
“Increasingly… U.S. courts appear to be an opportunity to hold governments directly accountable,” said a U.S.-based rights group that advocates for people facing cross-border persecution by repressive forces. said Yana Gorokhovskaya, research director at Freedom House. government.
“It’s an uphill battle,” Gorokhovskaya said, especially when little harassment occurs on U.S. soil. “But it’s definitely more than what we saw a few years ago.”
Khalid al-Jabri, a doctor like his father who lives in exile in Western countries fearing reprisal from the Saudi government, said the recent ruling allowing his father’s case to proceed will do more than help the latest victims. said.
“In the long term, I hope that repressive regimes will reconsider cross-border repression in the continental United States,” said the junior al-Jabri.
The Saudi embassy in Washington acknowledged receiving a request from The Associated Press for comment on the al-Jabri incident, but did not immediately respond. A lawyer for Bader al-Asaker, one of the two Saudis named in the case, declined to comment, while a lawyer for al-Qaftani did not respond.
Previous court filings by the crown prince’s lawyers have called al-Jabri a liar who is wanted in Saudi Arabia on corruption charges and said there was no evidence of a Saudi plot to kill him.
Meanwhile, the Saudi government said the killing of Khashoggi by Saudi agents inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was a “rogue operation” carried out without the crown prince’s knowledge.
The killing of Khashoggi and what al-Jabri claims happened amid a crackdown in the first years after King Salman and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed, assumed power in Saudi Arabia after King Abdullah’s death in 2015. They have detained critics, rights advocates, former celebrities of the former king and fellow princes in what the government has often claimed is a corruption probe.
Al-Jabri fled to Canada. As with Mr. Khashoggi, the complaint alleges that the crown prince sent an assassination team known as the Tiger Squad to kill him there, but the plot was thwarted when Canadian authorities interrogated the men and searched his luggage. claims. Canada has said little about the case, but a Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigator testified that authorities found the charges to be credible and continued to investigate.
Saudi Arabia has detained al-Jabri’s young son and daughter, which the family claims is intended to pressure their father to return to the kingdom.
Previous attempts to sue Saudi officials and the kingdom over the Khashoggi and al-Jabri cases have failed. A US court said Prince Mohammed himself had sovereign privileges under international law.
And judgments in civil cases against foreign governments and officials have little effect beyond reputational damage. If the regime or officials fail to comply, a court may rule in favor of the alleged victim in default.
A US court has noted that the alleged plot against al-Jabri targeted the crown prince’s home in Canada, not the US, but al-Jabri was linked to the crown prince’s inner circle as a Saudi informant in the US. He claims to have used the network of the Crown Prince to ascertain the whereabouts of the Crown Prince.
Late this summer, a federal appeals court in Washington reversed a lower court’s dismissal of al-Jabri’s claims. The appeals court said he had a legal right to find out whether there was enough evidence to justify trying the case in the United States.
A federal court last month ordered al-Qaftani and al-Asakel to begin handing over all texts, app messages and other communications related to the case by Nov. 4.
Ingrid Blank, a professor of international law at Vanderbilt University and an expert on international litigation, said this is “an interesting development.”
Courts in the United States and other democracies have become a prime forum for bringing human rights cases against repressive governments. But U.S. Supreme Court decisions since 2004 have blocked such actions in cases involving foreign parties with little connection to the United States, Blank said.
But recently, she said, particularly strong cases against foreign officials and governments have been gaining a foothold again in U.S. courts.
“We have some very good lawyers here,” Mr. Blank said of Mr. Al Jabri’s long-running case.
Other lawsuits are also underway. Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco allowed the reinstatement of a lawsuit brought by Chinese dissidents accusing the Chinese government of spying.
But rather than suing China, the rebels targeted Silicon Valley tech company Cisco Systems, which they accused of developing security systems that enabled espionage.
A federal jury trial in Florida this summer found Chiquita Brands responsible for the murders of Colombian civilians by right-wing militia groups that the banana company admitted paid for. Lawyers argued that this case is the first of its kind against a major U.S. company.
A US court also recently allowed a human rights case naming Türkiye and India to proceed.
Part of the increase in human rights litigation in U.S. courts (suits naming foreign officials or governments or targeting U.S. companies) is also due to plaintiffs’ “really promising, really creative” legal challenges. Blank said this is due to the approach they are pursuing.
Khalid al-Jabri said the family was not seeking money in the lawsuit. They want justice for their father and freedom for his sister and brother, who are in custody, he said.
