- The Biden administration did not sanction Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed over the 2018 murder of
Jamal Khashoggi . - Saudi critics Omar Abdulaziz and Iyad el-Baghdadi said this emboldens MBS to continue his crackdown.
- "I am actually less safe now than I was before," el-Baghdadi told The Guardian.
Saudi critics living in exile have told The Guardian's Stephanie Kirchgaessner that President
A report declassified last Friday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that the crown prince directly ordered the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a critical Saudi journalist and US resident.
The State Department sanctioned 76 Saudis connected with the hit, but Crown Prince Mohammed, also known as MBS, was spared.
The decision was widely criticized in Washington, and now activists and dissidents critical of MBS say that the move could embolden him to continue his crackdown on opposition.
"I am actually less safe now than I was before this," Iyad el-Baghdadi, an Arab activist who has long criticized of the crown prince, told The Guardian.
"The combined facts of [the US saying] 'Yes, he did it' and 'No, we cannot do anything about it but sanction some of his henchmen' is very dangerous."
El-Baghdadi, who was granted asylum in Norway in 2015, was taken into the protection of the country's intelligence services in 2019 after the CIA alerted them that Saudi authorities were seeking to silence him.
Khalid al-Jabri, the son of Saad al-Jabri, an exiled Saudi spy chief who has accused the crown prince of ordering a hit on his life, also told The Guardian that MBS "is probably thinking he can get away with future assassinations as long as he doesn't leave fingerprints."
"The lack of direct accountability will give MBS permanent impunity, rendering him more dangerous," he said.
Another exile, the Saudi vlogger Omar Abdulaziz, who currently lives in Canada, told The Guardian the US response sends a signal to MBS that he "can do whatever he wants."
In June 2020, Canadian federal police told Abdulaziz, a vocal critic of MBS, he was a "potential target" of
"No one is going to stop him, no one is going to punish him, they are going to call him a bad guy," Abdulaziz told The Guardian. "Justice has not been served."
In a justification of its decision not to punish MBS, the Biden administration said the US does not sanction the heads of other countries.
However, The Washington Post reported this week that behind the scenes, US officials didn't want to cause further tension between the US and Saudi Arabia by sanctioning the crown prince.
The Biden administration has already ended US support for the Saudi-backed war in Yemen and also declared that King Salman is Biden's opposite man, in a clear slight of MBS, who is the kingdom's de facto ruler.
On Tuesday Rep. Ilhan Omar introduced legislation to the House of Representatives to sanction MBS directly for ordering the hit on Khashoggi.
Khashoggi, who wrote for The Washington Post, was killed and dismembered during a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in early October 2018.
A trial in Saudi Arabia saw five members of the team that killed Khashoggi given 20-year jail terms. The five were initially sentenced to death, but Khashoggi's family issued them pardons.
Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi's widow, said the sentencing made "a complete mockery of justice."