Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018
Istanbul:
Twenty Saudi suspects, including two former collaborators of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, were tried in absentia in Turkey on Friday, accused of killing and dismembering journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
Khashoggi, 59, was an insider turned critical who wrote for the Washington Post before being killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018 where he had gone to fetch documents for his marriage to the Turkish fiancée Hatice Cengiz.
Turkish prosecutors say Saudi deputy intelligence chief Ahmed al-Assiri and royal court media tsar Saud al-Qahtani led the operation and gave orders to a Saudi team.
They were officially charged in March “for inciting deliberate and monstrous massacre, causing torment”.
Eighteen other suspects – including intelligence chief Maher Mutreb, who frequently traveled with the crown prince on foreign tours, forensic expert Salah al-Tubaigy and guard Fahad al-Balawi Saudi royal – have been charged with “willful and monstrous murder”. , causing torment. “
The prosecutor has already issued arrest warrants for suspects who are not in Turkey. They therefore risk a life sentence without risk of conviction.
Cengiz, who is a complainant in this case, attended the trial alongside the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Agnes Callamard.
Yasin Aktay, a close friend of Khashoggi and adviser to the ruling party of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was also in the courtroom.
Erdogan said the order to assassinate Khashoggi came from “the highest levels” of the Saudi government, but never directly blamed Prince Mohammed.
– “Continue the search for justice” –
“We have confidence in the Turkish judicial system. Now the judicial process has started. We will continue our search for justice, here in Turkey and everywhere else, using all available means,” Cengiz told reporters after the end of the audience.
It was Cengiz who informed the authorities of the disappearance of his fiancé after having waited several hours in front of the Saudi consulate.
During the Istanbul prosecutor’s investigation, the suspects’ telephone records, their presence at the consulate confirmed by video surveillance images, as well as Khashoggi’s laptop, two phones and an iPad were analyzed.
Khashoggi was killed and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in a case that tarnished the reputation of the crown prince despite his vigorous denial of any involvement.
The remains of Khashoggi have never been found.
Saudi Arabia describes the murder as a “rogue” operation, but the CIA and Callamard directly linked the murder to the crown prince, de facto ruler and heir to the Saudi throne.
Cengiz and a Turkish employee at the Saudi consul’s residence in Istanbul testified at the hearing on Friday.
According to Callamard, the employee said that he had been called to the residence on the day of the murder to light a large oven in the garden “where four or five” guests “” were already present.
“When he returned three days later, he discovered that the marble stone around the oven had been bleached,” she added.
The next hearing in this matter will take place on November 24.
– “Travesty of justice” –
A closed-door trial of 11 suspects in Saudi Arabia ended in December and five unnamed people were sentenced to death.
The former collaborators of the crown prince, Assiri and Qahtani, were exonerated.
“The Saudi process was anything but justice. It was a travesty of justice,” said Callamard after the hearing in Turkey.
The Turkish case “sends a very strong message to dictators around the world that they cannot get away with killing a journalist,” she added.
Khashoggi’s sons said they pardoned his killers in May this year, a move supposed to allow the government to grant leniency to the five death row inmates.
Relations between Ankara and Riyadh are rocky, having deteriorated considerably after the murder of Khashoggi.
The two countries are also opposed to the Libyan war, where Ankara recently helped reverse the trend in favor of the UN-recognized government in Tripoli.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
