Khashoggi’s fiancee hopes Turkish trial reveals his body’s whereabouts
Hatice Cengiz, the fiancee of slain Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, says she hopes the Turkish trial of 20 Saudi officials indicted over his brutal killing would shed more light on the murder and reveal the whereabouts of his body.
Turkish prosecutors in March charged the 20 Saudi nationals, including two former senior aides to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, over the killing. The indictment accuses Saud al-Qahtani and Ahmed al-Assiri of “instigating the deliberate and monstrous killing, causing torment.”
It said 18 other defendants carried out the killing by suffocating Khashoggi. All the 20 defendants are expected to be tried in absentia.
Khashoggi, a former advocate of the Saudi royal court who later became a critic of Mohammed bin Salman, was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, after he entered the perimeter to collect documents for his planned wedding. He had been falsely promised the documents.
The Washington Post, for which Khashoggi was a columnist, reported in November 2018 that the CIA had concluded that bin Salman personally ordered his killing.
Khashoggi’s killing damaged the ties between Ankara and Riyadh, and tarnished the prince's international image.
Ankara has called Khashoggi’s killing “premeditated murder,” and has pressed the kingdom for information on his dismembered body’s whereabouts.
“I hope this criminal case in Turkey brings to light the whereabouts of Jamal's body (and) the evidence against the killers,” Cengiz, who was waiting for him outside the consulate on the day of his killing, told Reuters.
Riyadh, which initially claimed Khashoggi left the consulate on the day, later admitted that he was killed, blaming the murder on a “rogue” group and putting 11 unnamed individuals on trial.
A year after the murder, the crown prince accepted responsibility. “It happened under my watch,” he said at the time.
In December 2019, a court in Saudi Arabia sentenced five people to death and three to jail for the murder after a largely secretive trial. Salah Khashoggi, his son, announced last May that his family had decided to forgive their father's killers, paving the way for their formal reprieve.
Cengiz has denounced the trial for not following due process. “No one can take the 'trial' that took place in Saudi Arabia legitimately; it was done in secret and the individuals sentenced are unnamed.”
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