‘COUNTER-DISSIDENT ACTIVITIES’

U.S. Imposes Visa Restrictions on 76 Saudi Citizens Under New ‘Khashoggi Ban’

The ban imposes travel restrictions on those who have “engaged in threatening dissidents overseas.”

Following the release of a classified U.S. intelligence report Friday that pinned the responsibility for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced the “Khashoggi Ban,” which restrict visas for people who, “acting on behalf of a foreign government, are believed to have been directly engaged in serious, extraterritorial counter-dissident activities, including those that suppress, harass, surveil, threaten, or harm journalists, activists,” or other dissidents and their families. The State Department is using the ban immediately on 76 Saudi citizens, it said in a statement. The 76 individuals are “believed to have been engaged in threatening dissidents overseas, including but not limited to the Khashoggi killing.”

Blinken said Khashoggi “paid with his life to express his beliefs,” and the ban was yet another measure “to reinforce the world’s condemnation of that crime,” in a statement released Friday. Under former President Trump, the intelligence report on Khashoggi’s death, widely considered an extrajudicial killing, remained classified.