FREEZE SAUDI ASSETS: CLEMENT
Act allows Canada to target foreign countries
OTTAWA • Canada should invoke the new Magnitsky Act to sanction those responsible for the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, says Conservative justice critic Tony Clement.
Clement says Saudi Arabia has already identified some individuals who were partially responsible for Khashoggi’s death, adding that the Magnitsky law is a next step the government should consider.
“This may be a prime case for applying the Magnitsky law,” Clement told reporters Monday morning.
Canada passed a law last year called the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, known as the Magnitsky Act, which gives the government the authority to freeze Canadian assets of foreign individuals who are found to have violated human rights.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland condemned the murder of Khashoggi on Monday, saying the various Saudi explanations for his death lacked credibility and consistency.
She said she has spoken with her counterparts from Germany and Turkey in recent days, and is actively engaged with Canada’s allies in crafting a joint response.
“We are working together to press for a transparent and credible investigation and we are very clear that there must be an accounting for this murder; those responsible must be brought to justice and must face the consequences,” Freeland told reporters Monday in Ottawa.
Freeland declined to answer questions about whether Ottawa is considering axing the lucrative $15-billion contract to provide Ontariomade light armoured vehicles Saudi Arabia.
In an interview recorded for a French-language talk show on Oct. 18, before Saudi authorities confirmed Khashoggi’s death, but broadcast on Oct. 21, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada would “always defend human rights, including with Saudi Arabia.” Asked about the arms deal, he pointed to clauses in the deal relating to human rights. “If they do not follow these clauses, we will definitely cancel the contract,” Trudeau said.
Monday, in Parliament, he went a step further. “We strongly demand and expect that Canadian exports are used in a way that fully respects human rights,” Trudeau said. “We have frozen export permits before when we had concerns about their potential misuse, and we will not hesitate to do so again.”
Trudeau also convened a meeting of the government’s new Incident Response Group, which includes cabinet ministers and senior government officials, to discuss the Khashoggi affair.
Khashoggi disappeared on Oct. 2 after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get paperwork he needed to marry his Turkish fiancée.
Turkish officials say he was tortured, killed and dismembered at the diplomatic outpost. According to surveillance video leaked Monday, just hours after Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi Consulate, a man strolled out of the diplomatic post apparently wearing the columnist’s clothes as part of a macabre deception to sow confusion over his fate.
The new video broadcast by CNN, as well as a progovernment Turkish newspaper’s report that a member of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s entourage made four calls to the royal’s office from the consulate around the same time, put ever-increasing pressure on the kingdom.
Meanwhile, Turkish crimescene investigators swarmed a garage Monday night in Istanbul where a Saudi consular vehicle had been parked. All this came on the eve of Prince Mohammed’s highprofile investment summit in Riyadh, which has seen a raft of the world’s top business leaders decline to attend over the slaying of the writer. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also has promised that details of Khashoggi’s killing “will be revealed in all its nakedness” in an address he’ll make before parliament around the same time Tuesday. “We are faced with a situation in which it was a brutally planned (killing) and efforts were made to cover it up,” said Omer Celik, a spokesman for Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party.
“God willing, the results will be brought into the open, those responsible will be punished and no one will dare think of carrying out such a thing again.”
The kingdom’s announcement Saturday that Khashoggi died in a “fistfight” was met with international skepticism and allegations of a coverup to absolve the 33-year-old crown prince of direct responsibility.
Turkish media reports and officials maintain that a 15-member Saudi team flew to Istanbul on Oct. 2, knowing Khashoggi would enter the consulate to get a document he needed to get married. Once he was inside, the Saudis accosted Khashoggi, cut off his fingers, killed and dismembered the 59-yearold writer, according to Turkish media reports.
Surveillance video on CNN showed the man in Khashoggi’s dress shirt, suit jacket and pants, although he wore a different pair of shoes. It cited a Turkish official as describing the man as a “body double” and a member of the Saudi team sent to Istanbul to target the writer. The man walks out of the consulate via its back exit with an accomplice, then takes a taxi to Istanbul’s famed Blue Mosque, where he goes to a public bathroom, changes back out of the clothes and leaves. He later eats dinner with his accomplice and goes back to a hotel, where footage shows him smiling and laughing.
In an interview with The Washington Post, U.S. President Donald Trump said: “Obviously there’s been deception and there’s been lies.”
“Their stories are all over the place,” he said of the Saudis, but praised the leadership of the Crown Prince calling him “a strong person, he has very good control.”
“He’s seen as a person who can keep things under check,” he said. “I mean that in a positive way.”