5 sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi murder
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Five people have been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 in Istanbul, prosecutors said on Monday, after a yearlong trial that has been criticized for its secrecy.
A criminal court in Riyadh also sentenced three others to a total of 24 years in jail for “covering up on the crime,” prosecutors said.
Khashoggi was killed after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018. He went in to get papers to marry Hatice Cengiz, who was waiting for him outside.
Cengiz said she has no comment at the moment.
Eleven people were charged in the case, including three who were acquitted by the court.
The identities of those sentenced will not be revealed until the sentences are final, Shalan alShalan, spokesman of the prosecutor’s office, told reporters.
Saudi Arabia has repeatedly said that Khashoggi’s death was a “rogue operation” and denied that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — widely viewed as the kingdom’s de facto ruler — was involved.
But the case has triggered global condemnation and overshadowed reforms championed by the crown prince to attract investors and tourists to the conservative kingdom.
The United Nations’ special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Agnes Callamard, criticized the sentences and the trial as a “mockery” since investigations have failed to identify the masterminds or “those who incited, allowed or turned a blind eye to the murder, such as the Crown Prince.”
“The hit-men are guilty, sentenced to death. The masterminds not only walk free. They have barely been touched by the investigation and the trial. That is the antithesis of justice. It is a mockery,” Callamard, who investigated Khashoggi’s murder, tweeted.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “continues to stress the need for an independent and impartial investigation into the murder to ensure full examination of and accountability for human rights violations committed in the case,” Guterres’ spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York on Monday.
In October, Crown Prince Mohammed told U.S. broadcaster CBS that he did not order the murder, but took “full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia.”
Three of the high-ranking officials, blamed for the murder, are not among those sentenced.
Saud al-Qahtani, a former close adviser to Mohammed, was questioned by the prosecutors but was not charged after no evidence was found of his involvement in the killing, the spokesman said.
Former consul general of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul, Mohamed al-Otaibi, was also questioned but was not charged, after it was proven he was on holiday at the time, Shalan added.
Both men were among 17 people sanctioned in November 2018 by the US Treasury Department for being part of an “operations team” involved in Khashoggi’s murder.
Ahmed al-Asiri, the then-deputy chief of intelligence and who was also once close to the crown prince, was charged in the case but acquitted by the court.
“Investigations showed that there was no prior intentions for murder in the beginning,” Shalaan said in a televised news conference.
It was an “instantaneous” murder that took place after “the head of the negotiations team realized he would not be able to move Khashoggi to a safe place to continue negotiations,” the spokesman said.
After that, the perpetrators decided to kill Khashoggi inside the consulate, he added.
All sentences can be appealed.
The trial, which began in January and was held over 10 hearings in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, has been shrouded in secrecy, raising concerns from international rights groups who have demanded transparency and independent monitoring of the proceedings.
Khashoggi’s sons and their lawyers attended the hearings, as well as representatives of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security General and Turkey, Shalan said.
One of Khashoggi’s sons, Salah, praised the verdict on Twitter, saying it delivered justice.
“We affirm our confidence in the Saudi judiciary at all levels,” he added.
Turkey’s foreign ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said the court’s verdict is “far from meeting the expectations of either Turkey or the international community” in delivering justice as it fails to shed light on the location of Khashoggi’s remains, which were never located.
The ministry reiterated that the murder took place on Turkish soil, and that all those responsible must be punished, calling also “for judicial cooperation from the Saudi authorities.”
An aide to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the verdict as “scandalous” and said it had come “after months of secret hearings.”
“Those who dispatched a death squad to Istanbul on a private jet, signed Khashoggi’s death warrant, disappeared the slain journalist’s body and sought to sweep this murder under the rug have been granted immunity,” Erdogan’s communications director Fahrettin Altun tweeted.
“To claim that a handful of intelligence operatives committed this murder is to mock the world’s intelligence,” Altun added.
Audiotapes of what purportedly happened in the consulate have been widely shared by Turkey with several countries and leaked to the media.
There are chilling details of conversations recorded minutes before Khashoggi entered, with one man asking if “the sacrificial animal” had arrived, according to a report by Callamard.