Turkey charges 20 in killing of Khashoggi

ANKARA, TURKEY— Turkish prosecutors have formally charged two former aides of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and 18 other Saudi nationals over the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, officials said Wednesday.

Astatement from the Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office said it has completed its investigation into Khashoggi’s grisly killing at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and has indicted 20 Saudi nationals. The killing drew international condemnation and cast a cloud of suspicion over Prince Mohammed.

All suspects however, have left Turkey and Saudi Arabia has rejected Turkish calls for their return to face trial in Turkey. Riyadh insisted the kingdom’s courts are the correct place for them to be tried and has put 11 people on trial over the killing. The Turkish indictment charges the prince’s former advisers, Saud al-Qahtani and Ahmed al-Asiri, with “instigating a premeditated murder with the intent of (causing) torment through fiendish instinct,” according to a statement from chief prosecutor Irfan Fidan’s office.

The indictment also calls for life prison sentences for 18 other Saudi nationals charged with carrying out “a premeditated murder with the intent of (causing) torment through fiendish instincts.”

Khashoggi, who was a resident of the U.S., had walked into the consulate on Oct. 2, 2018, for an appointment to pick up documents that would allow him to marry. He never walked out, and his body has not been found.