Death penalty sought in Khashoggi slaying; U.S. sanctions 17 Saudis
AMMAN, Jordan — Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor said Thursday that he is seeking the death penalty for five people suspected of taking part in the grisly slaying of dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, who disappeared after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in early October.
The unnamed suspects, part of a 15-man Saudi team sent to Turkey with orders to intercept the journalist, have been charged with “ordering and committing the crime,” in which the journalist is believed to have been killed and dismembered inside the consulate building.
As in previous versions presented by the Saudi government, the narrative Thursday appeared designed to shield the kingdom’s crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman from accusations that he had prior knowledge Khashoggi was to be killed.
According to the prosecutor’s statement, the five suspects were part of a team sent to persuade or force Khashoggi to return to Saudi Arabia. But Khashoggi was instead killed during a physical altercation and the five agreed with the rest of the team to send back a false report to their superiors saying the journalist had refused to return and had left the consulate “after the failure of negotiating or forcing his return.”
Six other suspects would also be punished, the prosecutor said, while investigations of 10 other individuals continue.
Turkish officials, including Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, quickly termed the Saudi statement “insufficient.” Cavusoglu insisted in a televised statement that Khashoggi’s death was premeditated.
Yasin Aktay, an adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the statement wasn’t “very credible.”
The death of Khashoggi, a onetime insider turned critic of the crown prince and a resident of the U.S., has spurred a wave of international anger against Saudi Arabia and its ruler.
Hours after the Saudi statement, the Trump administration, working under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, announced sanctions against 17 Saudi individuals involved in the operation, including the 15 members of the operations team, Saudi Consul General Mohammad Otaibi and Saud Qahtani, a top adviser to the crown prince.
“The Saudi officials we are sanctioning were involved in the abhorrent killing of Jamal Khashoggi,” said U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin.
“The United States continues to diligently work to ascertain all of the facts and will hold accountable each of those we find responsible in order to achieve justice for Khashoggi’s fiancee, children and the family he leaves behind . ... The government of Saudi Arabia must take appropriate steps to end any targeting of political dissidents or journalists.”
The Saudi statement marks “a positive first step” in the Khashoggi case, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Thursday. “It is important to continue those steps to full accountability.”
The Washington Post, for whom Khashoggi wrote columns, questioned that assessment.
“From the start,” said Publisher and CEO Fred Ryan in a statement, “the Saudi ‘investigation’ has been an effort to shield those ultimately responsible for this heinous crime when there is every reason to believe that it was authorized at the highest levels of the Saudi government. It is impossible to have confidence that we have gotten to the truth when the purported investigations were neither transparent nor independent and when evidence continues to be withheld.