Riyadh: Saudi Arabia has sentenced five people to death for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last year, the public prosecutor said on Monday. “The court issued death sentences on five men who directly took part in the killing,” the prosecutor said in a statement.
In a press conference, spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office Shalan al Shalan said three others were sentenced to different penalties, reports Efe news.
Saudi officials initially denied Khashoggi’s death on October 2, 2018, at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul but later acknowledged he had been killed when a fight broke out.
Saudi prosecutors had said deputy intelligence chief Ahmed al-Assiri oversaw the Washington Post columnist’s killing in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate in October 2018 and that he was advised by the royal court’s media czar Saud al-Qahtani. However, Qahtani was investigated but not indicted “due to insufficient evidence” and Assiri was investigated and charged but eventually acquitted on the same grounds, the statement said.
Saudi Arabia has said Khashoggi was killed in a “rogue operation” and put 11 defendants, all of whom are Saudi nationals, on trial earlier this year.
Khashoggi had been a columnist for the Washington Post since 2017 after he left Saudi Arabia and was openly critical of his country’s monarchy.
The Post has condemned Khashoggi’s killing, with its editorial page editor Fred Hiatt qualifying it as “a monstrous and unfathomable act” if true, in a statement made in October last year. He said Khashoggi was a “committed, courageous journalist”, according to the Post.
Khashoggi’s disappearance sparked backlash from the international community, drawing condemnation from organizations and world leaders. (Agencies)
