Jamal Khashoggi killing: Saudi crown prince ‘should face investigation’
SAUDI ARABIA-There is credible evidence that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other highlevel officials are individually liable for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a UN expert says. A report by special rapporteur Agnes Callamard says the evidence merits further investigation by an independent and impartial international inquiry. Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by Saudi agents. Saudi authorities insist they were not acting on Prince Mohammed’s orders.
The Gulf kingdom has put 11 unidentified people on trial behind closed doors for Khashoggi’s murder and is seeking the death penalty for five of them. However, Ms Callamard said the trial failed to meet international procedural and substantive standards, and called for it to be suspended.
The 58yearold journalist, a US-based columnist for the Washington Post and prominent critic of Prince Mohammed, was last seen entering the Saudi consulate on 2 October to obtain papers he needed to marry his fiancée Hatice Cengiz. Ms Callamard, the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said Khashoggi was “brutally slain” inside the consulate that day.
Saudi Arabia’s deputy public prosecutor Shalaan Shalaan told reporters in November that the murder was ordered by the head of a “negotiations team” sent to Istanbul by the Saudi deputy intelligence chief to force Khashoggi to return to the kingdom from his self-imposed exile. Investigators concluded that Khashoggi was forcibly restrained after a struggle and injected with a large amount of a drug – resulting in an overdose that led to his death, Mr Shalaan said. His body was then dismembered and handed over to a local “collaborator” outside the consulate, he added.
(BBC)