This story was co-published with The Oregonian/OregonLive.

The government of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly helped Saudi citizens evade prosecutors and the police in the United States and flee back to their homeland after being accused of serious crimes here, current and former U.S. officials said.

The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies have been aware of the Saudi actions for at least a decade, officials said. But successive American administrations have avoided confronting the government in Riyadh out of concern that doing so might jeopardize U.S. interests, particularly Saudi cooperation in the fight against Islamist terrorism, current and former officials said.

Fleeing Justice

University students from Saudi Arabia studying in the U.S. and Canada have vanished while facing criminal charges. Authorities suspect the Saudi government is spiriting them out of the country.

“It’s not that the issue of Saudi fugitives from the U.S. wasn’t important,” said retired FBI agent Jeffrey Danik, who served as the agency’s assistant legal attache in Riyadh from 2010 to 2012. “It’s that the security relationship was so much more important. On counter-terrorism, on protecting the U.S. and its partners, on opposing Iran, the Saudis were invaluable allies.”

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