UN must seek justice for Khashoggi

This is an excerpt from a column in The Guardian by Geoffrey Robertson:

The slaying of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was a barbaric act, ordered and carried out by barbarians. It cried out for justice — which means, inevitably, a trial.

Yet all the British government is demanding is an “investigation” — by the same Saudi state that spent 17 days lying about its responsibility and is still offering unbelievable excuses for the murder.

Any Saudi investigation would, at most, offer up a few scapegoats who would be subjected to a secretive procedure and in reality punished for their incompetence rather than their guilt.

But this was an international crime that took place in breach of United Nations conventions in the precincts of a consulate enjoying inviolability under international law. It involved the silencing of a U.S.-based journalist for exercising the right of freedom of speech — a right also belonging to all his potential readers, and guaranteed under every international human rights convention. It was an action by a UN member state that threatens peace and security and it should be taken up by the UN security council, which has acted before to set up tribunals to deal with similar atrocities.

There are enough precedents for the security council to act so as to avoid international conflict, to set up a court to research and punish the carefully planned assassination of a journalist in a member state by agents of another member state …

The crown prince himself may be too big to jail, but the only prospect of getting at the truth about this hideous event will come from the establishment of an international court.