Hatice Cengiz posted a short video on the fourth anniversary of the day her fiancé disappeared. Her message was plain: the people who killed Jamal Khashoggi are still “at large,” and that should not stop anyone from defending what he stood for. “Justice for Jamal, justice of all of us,” she said.
Khashoggi was 59 when he walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018. He wanted papers for their wedding. Saudi agents killed him there, and his remains have never been found.
A trial that moved to Riyadh
Turkey had put 26 suspects on trial in absentia, starting in 2020, when relations with Riyadh were poor. That ended in April 2022, when an Istanbul court confirmed it was halting the case and sending it to Saudi Arabia. Turkish Minute reported that Ankara, short of investment money, had been trying to repair the relationship. Rights groups objected loudly.
The anniversary itself passed almost unmarked by those in power. Pro-government papers ignored it, and so did President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ministers. A few opposition lawmakers filled the gap. Yunus Emre of the Republican People’s Party wrote that the case had been handed “to the people who dismembered his body,” and he pointed to the ceremony in Ankara in June, when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made his first trip to Turkey since the killing. Saudi state media released a photo of Erdoğan embracing him. Opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu accused the president of hugging the killer.
What Washington says
US intelligence officials have determined that the crown prince approved the plot. Riyadh denies it. Secretary of State Antony Blinken marked the date on Twitter, calling the murder “an attack on freedom of expression everywhere.”
That message sat awkwardly beside the record. President Biden promised during his 2020 campaign to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah,” then flew to Riyadh in July and was photographed fist-bumping the prince. Biden said afterward that he had told the prince he held him responsible, and that the prince rejected any personal blame. Saudi officials claimed Biden never brought up Khashoggi at all. The Wall Street Journal reported the week before the anniversary that a government panel had urged Biden to declassify the full intelligence report a few weeks ahead of that trip.
No one answerable
Reporters Without Borders put the outcome bluntly. Not one of the 26 men implicated has been genuinely punished, it said, and Saud al-Qahtani, the former royal adviser accused of leading them, never even stood trial. RSF added that his name had resurfaced on Saudi social media amid talk of a return to the centre of power, in a government that the crown prince now formally leads himself.
Khashoggi’s widow, Hanan Elatr, wrote in The Guardian that Turkey has never given her his two mobile phones, laptop and tablet, which she regards as key evidence. She plans to sue the spyware maker NSO Group in the United States, saying the Pegasus software was used on her, and wants the devices for that case. Turkey, she wrote, has made clear it does not intend to pursue the investigation or the trial.
Sources
- Khashoggi murder case seems more elusive than ever on 4th anniversary
- Blinken marks Khashoggi murder as 'attack on freedom of expression everywhere'
