Jamal Khashoggi: Saudi court sentences suspects in Khashoggi murder
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One defendant was handed a sentence of 10 years and the two others face seven years in prison, SPA reported on Monday.
Agnes Callamard, the UN Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Killings who lead an independent investigation into the murder, called the verdicts a “parody of justice” on Monday.
“The Saudi Prosecutor performed one more act today in this parody of justice. But these verdicts carry no legal or moral legitimacy. They came at the end of a process which was neither fair, nor just, or transparent,” Callamard wrote on Twitter.
“The 5 hit men are sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, but the high-level officials who organized and embraced the execution of Jamal Khashoggi have walked free from the start — barely touched by the investigation and trial,” she added.
The fiancĂ©e of the late Jamal Khashoggi, Hatice Cengiz, called the ruling a “mockery of justice” and a “farce.”
In a statement released on her Twitter account Monday, Cengiz also said the most important questions surrounding Khashoggi’s murder remain unanswered. “The Saudi authorities are closing the case without the world knowing the truth of who is responsible for Jamal’s murder,” Cengiz said. “Who planned it, who ordered it, where is his body?”
Khashoggi — a Washington Post columnist and royal insider-turned-critic — was killed and allegedly dismembered after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, having gone into the building to collect documents for his upcoming wedding.
Additionally, there was “no evidence” Saud al-Qahtani — a former top adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and a member of his inner circle — the Saudi Prosecution said in 2019.
Riyadh’s version of what happened on October 2 has repeatedly shifted as new details emerged, but it has always maintained that neither bin Salman nor his father King Salman knew of the operation to target Khashoggi.
US officials, however, have said such a mission — including 15 men sent from the Kingdom — could not have been carried out without the authorization of bin Salman.
CNN’s Sarah El Sirgany and Lauren Said-Moorhouse contributed to this report.
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