Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the assassination journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, a previously classified report released on Friday by the Biden administration has found.

The four-page U.S. intelligence report all but confirmed the widely held notion that Riyadh was culpable in the death of Mr. Khashoggi.

“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an 

operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” the document reads. 

The report is dated February 11 and marked as declassified by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on February 25. The document notes the Crown Prince’s control of security details, saying that it was “highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization.”

The release of the report is said to be accompanied by further actions from the United States, this will be revealed by the State Department.

In 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist known for his criticism of Saudi government, went to the consulate in order to get papers that would have permitted him to get married. 

The public prosecutors reported that Mr. Khashoggi was restrained and drugged which led to his death. His body was then dismembered and handed over to a local “collaborator” outside the consulate.  The remains were never found.

Shortly after Khashoggi’s October 2018 death, the CIA assessed with high confidence that the crown prince had personally ordered the killing. 

The Saudi Government denied the killing initially, using a body double wearing Khashoggi’s clothes to show the journalist leaving the building, but later his death was pegged as  a “rogue operation”

Much of the evidence the C.I.A. used to draw its conclusion remains classified, including details from recordings of Mr. Khashoggi’s killing and dismemberment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul that were obtained by Turkish intelligence.

But the report does outline who carried out the killing, describe what Prince Mohammed knew about the operation and lay out how the C.I.A. concluded that he ordered it and bears responsibility for the death of Mr. Khashoggi.