Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi



Jamal Khashoggi in March 2018

On 2 October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident, journalist, columnist for The Washington Post, former editor of Al-Watan and former general manager and editor-in-chief of the Al-Arab News Channel, was assassinated by agents of the Saudi government at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Lured to the consulate building on the pretext of providing him papers for his upcoming wedding, Khashoggi was ambushed, suffocated, and dismembered by a 15-member squad of Saudi assassins. Khashoggi's final moments are captured in audio recordings, transcripts of which were subsequently made public. The Turkish investigation concluded that Khashoggi had been strangled as soon as he entered the consulate building, and that his body was dismembered and disposed of. Turkish investigators, as well as investigations by The New York Times, concluded that some of the 15 members of the Saudi hit team were closely connected to Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and that the team had traveled to Istanbul specifically to commit the murder.

The Saudi government engaged in an extensive effort to cover up the killing, including destroying evidence. After repeatedly shifting its account of what happened to Khashoggi in the days following the killing, the Saudi government admitted that Khashoggi had been killed in a premeditated murder, but denied that the killing took place on the orders of bin Salman, who said he accepted responsibility for the killing "because it happened under my watch" but asserted that he did not order it. Turkish officials released an audio recording of Khashoggi's killing that they alleged contained evidence that Khashoggi had been assassinated on the orders of Mohammed bin Salman. By November 2018, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, based on multiple sources of intelligence, had concluded that bin Salman had ordered Khashoggi's assassination. In the same month, the United States sanctioned 17 Saudi individuals under the Magnitsky Act over the Khashoggi murder, including former bin Salman advisor Saud Al-Qahtani, but did not sanction bin Salman himself. U.S. President Donald Trump disputed the CIA assessment, expressed support for bin Salman, and stated that the investigation into Khashoggi's death had to continue.

The murder prompted intense global scrutiny and criticism of the Saudi government. A June 2019 report issued by Agnès Callamard, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, concluded that Khashoggi's murder was "a brutal and premeditated killing, planned and perpetrated." Callamard determined that responsibility for Khashoggi's killing, and the elaborate campaign to cover it up, rests with the highest officials of the Saudi royal court and that "credible evidence" called for the "investigation of high-level Saudi officials' individual liability, including the crown prince's." Callamard's report also detailed the role of the Saudi consul general in Istanbul in coordinating the killing, undercutting the claim that the murder was an unauthorized act by rogue operatives. The special rapporteur called for a criminal investigation to be undertaken by the UN and, because Khashoggi was a resident of the United States, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In January 2019, the Saudi government began trials against 11 Saudis accused of involvement in Khashoggi's murder. In December 2019, following proceedings shrouded in secrecy, a Saudi court acquitted three defendants; sentenced five defendants to death; and sentenced three defendants to prison terms. The acquitted defendants, Saud al-Qahtani and Ahmed al-Asiri, were high-level Saudi security officials, while the five men sentenced to death were "essentially foot soldiers in the killing" and were eventually legally pardoned in May 2020 by Khashoggi's children. Saudi prosecutors rejected the findings of the UN investigation and asserted that the killing "was not premeditated", but the decision to commit it was instead "taken at the spur of the moment." UN special rapporteur Callamard said the Saudi verdict was a "mockery" because "the masterminds not only walk free, they have barely been touched by the investigation and the trial." Human rights group Amnesty International called the verdict a "whitewash" and the Turkish government said that the trials had fallen far short of "justice being served and accountability."

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