Saudi Crown Prince Trying to Silence Criticism of Khashoggi's Murder: Fiancee
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Saudi Arabia’s crown prince is accepting “responsibility” for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in a bid to draw a line under his killing and make the world look away, the journalist’s fiancée said.
Hatice Cengiz, 37, told The Daily Telegraph that she was unimpressed by Mohammad bin Salman’s recent round of interviews, on the anniversary of Khashoggi’s death, in which he accepted responsibility, as a leader of the nation, but denied ordering the murder.
“The crown prince’s comments are a general tactic to silence the case, and quieten the media,” she said.
“I think the timing of his statement was very interesting. In a few days it’s going to be the anniversary of Jamal’s killing, and it will be hotly debated in the world. In the last year international media has exerted huge pressure on this.
“Up until now, we have had nothing but silence from the Saudi side.
“There is a court proceeding going on in Saudi Arabia. Eleven people are on trial. But we don’t know how it is being handled. It’s going on behind closed doors, and we are not informed of any details of the hearings.
“So Saudi Arabia could not explain that much. Many questions remain unanswered.”
Khashoggi, a Saudi-born journalist and critic of the kingdom, was murdered on October 2, 2018.
He had gone into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain a marriage license but never came out. A team of 15 Saudi assassins waited for him inside, killing him and dismembering his body before flying out of the country on a government plane.
The murderers were heard laughing and joking about killing him, shortly before he entered the consulate, in wiretaps released by the Turkish government.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws, QC, a leading critic of human rights abuses in the kingdom, said that Salah al-Tubaigy, a forensic pathologist, and Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, an aide of the crown prince, were caught on the recordings.
“Tubaigy says: ‘It’s the first time in my life that I’ll have had to cut pieces on the ground. Even if you’re a butcher and you want to cut... he hangs the animal up to do so,’" she told the BBC.
“It’s a sort of chilling business. They’re waiting there knowing that this man is going to come in and he’s going to be murdered.
“There is no doubt in my mind that this was a seriously, highly organized mission coming from the top. This was not some flaky maverick operation. Something treacherous and terrible happened in that embassy. The international community has a responsibility to insist on a high-level judicial inquiry.”