Khashoggi’s son defends Saudi justice system
RIYADH/DUBAI: The son of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who has denied a financial settlement with the government, spoke out in defence of the kingdom on Tuesday ahead of the first anniversary of the killing.
Khashoggi - a royal family insider turned critic - was killed and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, in an operation that reportedly involved 15 agents sent from Riyadh. His body was never found.
“A year has gone by since the passing of my beloved father. During this time, opponents and enemies in the East and West sought to exploit his case... to undermine my country and leadership,” Salah Khashoggi said in a tweet. “I have full confidence in the kingdom’s judicial system and in its ability to serve justice to those behind this heinous crime,” he said.
The Washington Post reported on April 1 that Khashoggi’s children, including Salah, had received multimillion-dollar homes and were being paid thousands of dollars per month by authorities.
Both the CIA and a UN special envoy have directly linked de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the murder, a charge the kingdom denies.
Speaking to CBS’s 60 Minutes ahead of the anniversary, Prince Mohammed denied ordering Khashoggi’s killing, but said he “took full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia”.
Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings whose independent probe found “credible evidence” linking him to the murder and attempted cover-up, dismissed that defence. “He is only taking corporate responsibility for the crime, which goes without saying,” she told AFP.
Meanwhile, global outrage over Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder has dissipated a year after the killing, but justice remains elusive with opaque trial proceedings and the government cracking down on dissent.
Seeking to draw a line under one of its worst diplomatic crises, Saudi Arabia has put 11 unidentified suspects on trial for the murder in its Istanbul consulate last October, with five of them facing the death penalty. Conspicuously absent from the closed-door trial that began in January is Saud al-Qahtani, the royal court’s media czar and a close confidant of the prince, who was sacked over his suspected role in the affair. Qahtani has not appeared in public since the murder.