DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – A Saudi court on Monday issued a definitive verdict in the murder of Washington Post columnist and Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi after his son, still living in the kingdom, announced pardons forgiving five of them. condemned execution.
As the trial comes to an end in Saudi Arabia, the case continues to overbden the foreign reputation of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose affiliates have been sanctioned across the United States and the United Kingdom for his alleged involvement in the brutal murder. , which took up position at the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul.
The definitive verdicts of the Riyadh Criminal Court were announced via Saudi state television, which broadcast some main points on the 8 Saudi citizens and did not call them. 10 years in prison and another two to seven years in prison.
A team of 15 Saudi agents had travelled to Turkey to meet Khashoggi inside the consulate for their appointment on October 2, 2018 to retrieve documents that would allow her to marry her Turkish fiancé, who was waiting outside. The team included a medical examiner, intelligence and security officials and others working directly for the office of the crown prince, according to Agnes Callamard, who investigated the murder for the United Nations.
The Turkish government says Khashoggi was killed and then dismembered with a bone saw inside the consulate, but his frame has not been found. Turkey had heard the consulate and shared the audio of the murder with the C. I. A. , among others.
Western intelligence agencies, as well as the United States Congress, have said that the crown prince had a final duty for murder and that an operation of this magnitude may have taken a position without his knowledge.
The 35-year-old prince denies having wisdom in the operation and condemned the murder. He continues to enjoy that of his father, King Salman, and remains popular with young Saudis at home. He also maintains the position of President Donald Trump, who has defended relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia in the face of foreign outrage over the assassination.
The trial of suspects in Saudi Arabia has been widely criticized by human rights teams and observers, who point out that no senior official or suspected of ordering the killing has been convicted. The independence of the Criminal Court in Riyadh has also been called into question.
Callamard, the UN special rapporteur who investigated Khashoggi’s murder, told The Associated Press in a statement that the crown prince had remained “well protected from any significant control in his country” and that senior officials who organized the assassination remained free from the start.
“These verdicts will be allowed to whiten what happened,” he said, and asked U. S. intelligence agencies to publicly disclose their evidence of the crown prince’s responsibility. “If formal justice is achieved in Saudi Arabia, the fact can be said. “
A small number of diplomats, in addition to Turkey, as members of Khashoggi’s family, were able to attend the initial trial. Independent media and the public have been banned.
Yasin Aktay, a prominent member of Turkey’s ruling party and a friend of Khashoggi’s, criticized the court’s final rulings and said those who ordered the murder remain unanswered, while several questions about the journalist’s death remain unanswered.
He also said there were doubts as to whether those convicted of the murder were imprisoned.
“From what we have heard, those who have been condemned are giants and live in luxury,” he said. “The fact is that this case will have to be tried in Turkey, not Saudi Arabia. “
Saudi Arabia tried 11 other people in total, sentenced five others to death in December and sentenced three others to a crime for concealing the crime. The chief advisers of the crown prince at the time of the assassination, namely Saud al-Qahtani and intelligence officer Ahmed al-Asiri, were not convicted.
The trial also found that the killing was not premeditated, paving the way for Salah Khashoggi, one of the homicidal writer’s sons, to announce months later that the circle of relatives had pardoned the killers, necessarily allowing the five to be pardoned. of compliance enforcement. with Islamic law.
Salah Khashoggi lives in Saudi Arabia and won a monetary refund from the royal court for his father’s murder.
Saudi Arabia first presented converging accounts of Khashoggi’s disappearance, adding that he claimed to have a surveillance video in which he appeared to be leaving the consulate alive. As foreign tension was fixed on Turkish leaks, the kingdom nevertheless accepted the explanation that he had been killed through dishonest officials. an internal battle of the consulate.
Prior to his assassination, Khashoggi had criticized Prince Mohammed in the columns of the Washington Post at a time when the young heir to the throne was widely praised in the United States for pushing for social reforms and cutting the strength of devout conservatives.
Dozens of suspected prince critics remain in prison, as well as women’s rights activists, and face trial on national security charges. Khashoggi left Saudi Arabia for the United States just as Prince Mohammed began arresting writers and critics in late 2017.
Other critics of the crown prince said his protection had been threatened after Khashoggi’s assassination. In one case, a former high-ranking intelligence officer now living in Canada alleges in a lawsuit in the United States that Prince Mohammed sent an attack team to locate and kill him, however, that they were arrested through Canadian border guards.
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Associated Press Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey contributed.