Congress is on the verge of forcing U.S. intelligence officials to publicly disclose what they know about the Saudi Arabian government’s suspected role in spiriting its citizens out of the United States to escape prosecution for serious crimes.

The measure, championed by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, would require the director of the FBI — in coordination with the nation’s intelligence director — to declassify all information related to how the Saudi government may have helped accused lawbreakers leave the U.S.

It is part of a $1.4 trillion spending deal to avert a government shutdown that the House overwhelmingly passed Tuesday and the Senate plans to approve by the end of the week.

President Donald Trump is expected sign the deal into law, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporters.

The pending passage comes nearly a year after an investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive found multiple cases where Saudi students studying throughout the U.S. vanished while facing sex crime and other felony charges.

[Read The Oregon/OregonLive’s investigative series “Fleeing Justice” here]

Wyden, a Democrat, has since pushed federal agencies and needled administration officials for information about the cases, only to be shut down time and again.

“The federal government has been stonewalling for months,” he told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “I believe this bill is necessary to get Oregonians and the American people the answers they deserve.”

The news organization revealed criminal cases involving at least seven Saudi nationals who disappeared from Oregon before they faced trial or completed their jail sentence on charges ranging from rape to manslaughter, including those who had surrendered their passports to authorities.

The investigation also found similar cases in at least seven other states — Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin — and Canada, bringing the total number of known Saudi suspects who have escaped to 25.

Some date back 30 years, suggesting the Saudi government had spent decades helping its citizens flee, subverting the criminal justice system and leaving untold numbers of victims without any recourse.

The United States and Saudi Arabia don’t share an extradition treaty. That makes the return of any Saudi suspect who has left the U.S. unlikely, if not impossible, without diplomatic or political pressure.

In April, a story co-published by The Oregonian/OregonLive and ProPublica showed how the FBI, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other agencies have been aware of Saudi officials helping their country’s citizens avoid prosecution since at least 2008 yet never intervened.

The Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., has previously said that, as a policy, the Saudi government will cover the cost of bail for any citizen jailed in the U.S. who asks for assistance.

The kingdom also denies playing any role in helping Saudi citizens escape.

Wyden and fellow Oregon U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley have been the only lawmakers in Washington to publicly raise concerns over the Saudi disappearances and demand action from the Trump administration.

The pair earlier this year co-sponsored bills that would have required the federal government to investigate the disappearances and to impose sanctions against any Saudi diplomat or official found to have assisted Saudi fugitives. The measures never advanced in the Senate.

In public and private, Wyden also has repeatedly pressed the heads of federal agencies for answers, including the FBI director, the secretary of state and the attorney general with little success.

“I’ve used every single tool at my disposal,” he said.

The senator finally had a breakthrough in October. Following an impassioned 13-minute speech on the Senate floor, Wyden won passage of a standalone bill called the Saudi Fugitives Declassification Act.

Wyden said he and his staff spent the last several weeks lobbying a bipartisan group of House and Senate leaders to build support for his measure, with language nearly identical to the provision now in the spending bill before Congress.

In an interview, Wyden also highlighted the case of Fallon Smart, a Portland teen struck and killed along Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard in 2016. The suspect, 21-year-old Portland Community College student Abulrahman Sameer Noorah, vanished weeks before his manslaughter trial and later resurfaced in Saudi Arabia.

Officials with Homeland Security and the U.S. Marshals Service told The Oregonian/OregonLive last year they believe Noorah left his Southeast Portland neighborhood in a black SUV and later used an illicit passport and private plane, likely provided by the Saudi government, to evade justice.

“I believe strongly that Fallon Smart and other victims of these cruel acts deserve better,” Wyden said.

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh; 503-294-7632

Email at skavanaugh@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @shanedkavanaugh

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