Death penalty sought for 5 in writer’s killing

BEIRUT — Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor said on Thursday that he was requesting the death penalty for five people suspected of involvement in the killing of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in the country’s consulate in Istanbul.

Speaking to reporters in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, a spokesman for the public prosecutor said that the 15-man team sent to confront Khashoggi had orders to return him to the kingdom, but after he resisted they decided on the spot to kill and dismember him.

The Saudi prosecutor’s account on Thursday appeared to contradict previous statements from both the Saudi government and senior White House officials about Saudi conclusions regarding the killing on Oct. 2 of Khashoggi.

The assassination of Khashoggi, a Virginia resident who wrote columns for The Washington Post that were critical of some Saudi policies, has caused widespread international outrage and the largest foreign relations crisis for the kingdom since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The statement from the Saudis on Thursday also sought to reinforce previous claims that the team in Istanbul had acted without the consent of the kingdom’s top leadership, meaning King Salman and his son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Before Thursday, the Saudis, whose versions of events has shifted, had most recently acknowledged evidence from Turkey that Khashoggi was killed in a deliberate, premeditated assassination.

The admission on Thursday that the killers had dismembered Khashoggi’s body to dispose of the remains appeared consistent with that version of events. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in interviews, had credited Saudi Arabia with acknowledging the premeditated character of the killing as part of the Saudi investigation.

But the Saudi account on Thursday appeared to double back to previous explanations that the operation had originally intended only to question or capture Khashoggi.

While acknowledging that the killers had quickly cut up the body, the Saudi prosecutor sought to portray the dismemberment as a spur-of-the-moment decision after an unintended killing. President Trump had previously dismissed that explanation as “the worst cover-up ever.”

Khashoggi’s body has not been found. Turkish officials have speculated that the Saudi agents dissolved it in acid.

Saudi Broadcast Authority Deputy Public Prosecutor Shalaan al-Shalaan delivers a speech in Riyadh, in which he exonerated Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.