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The license to train the Saudi Royal Guard was first issued in 2014, but there is no evidence that US officials were aware of the operation.
The four Saudis involved The Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi was killed in 2018 The New York Times reported on Tuesday that under the contract approved by the State Department, he received paramilitary training in the United States the previous year.
According to The Times, the training is provided by the Tier 1 Group of the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, which is defensive in nature and aims to protect Saudi leaders.
Cerberus did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
In response to the New York Times report, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said that under the law, the department cannot comment on “any permitted defense export licensing activities alleged in media reports.”
Price also stated that US policy towards Saudi Arabia “will give priority to the rule of law and respect for human rights.”
U.S. resident Khashoggi wrote a column for The Washington Post, criticizing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Killed and mutilated by a group of agents associated with the prince at the Kingdom Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.
A US intelligence report in February stated that the crown prince had approved an operation to arrest or kill the journalist.
‘Tightly intertwined’
According to reports, Cerberus senior manager Louis Bremer confirmed his company’s role in training the four members of the Khashoggi killing team in a written response to questions raised by members of Congress last year. Former President Donald Trump’s administration holds part of a senior position. era.
But according to The Times, the lawmakers never received answers because the Trump administration did not seem to submit them to Congress before withdrawing Bremer’s nomination. The Times said that Bremer provided it with documents.
According to the Times, Bremer said that the U.S. State Department and other government agencies are responsible for reviewing foreign troops trained in the United States.
The New York Times reported that there is no evidence that the American officials or Tier 1 executives who approved the training knew that the Saudis were involved in the repression in Saudi Arabia.
But it added that the case involving Khashoggi shows how closely the United States and Saudi Arabia are connected, “even if its agents have committed terrible human rights violations”.
According to the report, the permit to provide paramilitary training to the Royal Saudi Guard was first issued by the State Department in 2014, during the time of Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.
Then the training lasts at least until the first year of Trump’s term.
Investigative reporter Michael Isikoff’s recent Yahoo News report also revealed that The team of Saudi assassins who allegedly killed Khashoggi According to reports, they stopped in the Egyptian capital to pick up the drugs they used to kill dissidents.
The report stated that a Gulfstream jet stopped in Cairo on October 2, 2018, and finally landed in Istanbul.
The report did not mention the type of drugs used to kill Kashuji, nor did it mention who provided these drugs to the assassins.
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