Rulings signal US courts may be more open to lawsuits accusing foreign officials of abuses
WASHINGTON — A US court has given two top aides to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman until early November to turn over all evidence in a trial of a former senior Saudi intelligence official who says he survived a plot by the kingdom to silence him to impose.
The order is part of a series of recent rulings that suggest U.S. courts are increasingly open to lawsuits seeking to hold foreign powers responsible for rights abuses, legal experts and lawyers say. That’s after a few decades in which American judges tended to dismiss those cases.
Former Saudi intelligence official Saad al-Jabri’s long-running lawsuit accuses Saudi Arabia of trying to kill him in October 2018. The kingdom calls the accusation unfounded. That’s the same month claim the US, UN and others those assistants of Prince Mohammed and other Saudi officials killed US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggiwhose columns for The Washington Post were critical of the crown prince.
Al-Jabri’s lawsuit alleges that the plot against him involved at least one of the same officials, former royal court adviser Saud al-Qahtani, who has been targeted by the Biden administration. sanctioned about allegations of involvement in Khashoggi’s murder.
The ruling is among a half-dozen recent rulings that have given rights groups and dissidents hope that U.S. courts will again become more receptive to lawsuits accusing foreign governments and officials of abuses — even when misconduct occurs abroad.
“It increasingly appears that the US courts are an opportunity to hold governments directly accountable,” said Yana Gorokhovskaia, research director of Freedom House, a US-based rights group that advocates for people facing cross-border persecution by repressive governments.
“It’s an uphill battle,” especially in cases where little of the alleged harassment occurred on U.S. soil, Gorokhovskaia noted. “But it is more than we certainly saw a few years ago.”
Khalid al-Jabri, a doctor who, like his father, lives in exile in the West for fear of reprisals from the Saudi government, said the recent ruling allowing his father’s lawsuit to move forward will do more than just recent victims to help.
It “will hopefully, in the long run, make oppressive regimes think twice about transnational repression on American soil,” the younger al-Jabri said.
The Saudi embassy in Washington acknowledged receiving requests for comment from The Associated Press in the Al-Jabri case but did not immediately respond. Lawyers for one of the two Saudis named in the case, Bader al-Asaker, declined to comment, while lawyers for al-Qahtani did not respond.
Previous legal filings from lawyers for the crown prince called al-Jabri a liar who wanted to face corruption charges in Saudi Arabia and said there was no evidence of a Saudi plot to kill him.
The Saudi government has now said this the murder of Khashoggi by Saudi agents A “rogue operation” was carried out inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul without the knowledge of the crown prince.
Khashoggi’s murder and the events alleged by Al-Jabri took place in a tough approach in the first years after King Salman and his son Prince Mohammed came to power in Saudi Arabia following the death of King Abdullah in 2015. They arrested critics and human rights defenders, former prominent figures under the old king and fellow princes for what the government often said was they were corruption investigations.
Al-Jabri fled to Canada. As with Khashoggi, the lawsuit alleges the crown prince sent a hit squad known as the “Tiger Squad” to kill him there, but claims the plot was foiled when Canadian officials interrogated the men and examined their luggage. Canada has said little about the case, although a Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigator said officials found the allegations credible and said they were still being investigated.
Saudi Arabia has detained a younger son and daughter of al-Jabri in what the family claims is an attempt to pressure the father to return to the kingdom.
So far, efforts to indict Saudi officials and the kingdom over the Khashoggi and Al-Jabri cases have failed. American courts have said so Prince Mohammed himself has sovereign immunity under international law.
And judgments in civil cases against foreign governments and officials may have little effect beyond reputational damage. Courts sometimes rule in absentia in favor of the alleged victim when a regime or official fails to respond.
US courts noted that the alleged plot against Al-Jabri targeted him at his home in Canada, and not in the United States, although Al-Jabri claims that the crown prince’s aides used a network of Saudi informants in the US to to find out his whereabouts.
Late this summer, a federal appeals court in Washington reversed a lower court’s dismissal of Al-Jabri’s claims. He has the legal right to gather evidence to see if there is enough to try the case in the U.S., the appeals court said.
Federal courts last month ordered al-Qahtani and al-Asaker to hand over all relevant texts, messages on apps and other communications in the case by November 4.
It’s an “exciting development,” said Ingrid Brunk, a professor of international law at Vanderbilt University and an expert on international law.
Courts in the US and other democracies are favored venues for bringing human rights cases against repressive governments. But U.S. Supreme Court rulings since 2004 have nipped such lawsuits in the bud in cases involving foreign parties, which often have little connection to the U.S., Brunk said.
Recently, however, particularly strong lawsuits against foreign officials and governments are regaining a foothold in U.S. courts, she said.
“There are very good lawyers here,” Brunk said of Al-Jabri’s long-running case.
Other lawsuits have also made progress. A U.S. appeals court in San Francisco last month allowed the revival of a case by Chinese dissidents who accused the Chinese government of spying on them.
Instead of denouncing China, however, the dissidents targeted Cisco Systems, the Silicon Valley technology company they accused of developing the security system that made espionage possible.
A federal jury trial in Florida this summer found Chiquita Brands liable for the murder of Colombian citizens by a right-wing paramilitary group for which the banana company acknowledged having paid. Lawyers called it a first against a major American company.
US courts have also recently allowed human rights lawsuits naming Turkey and India to proceed.
Part of the rise in human rights cases — naming foreign officials and governments or targeting U.S. companies — in U.S. courts again stems from plaintiffs pursuing “really promising, really creative” legal approaches, Brunk said.
Khalid al-Jabri said the family is not seeking money in the lawsuit. They want justice for his father, he said, and freedom for his incarcerated sister and brother.