Saudi Arabia court sentences 8 to prison over Khashoggi killing

Saudi Arabia court sentences 8 to prison over Khashoggi killing

A Saudi Arabian court has issued final verdicts in the case of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s 2018 killing inside the country’s Istanbul consulate, according to Saudi state media.

Five individuals, who were not named, will receive maximum sentences of 20 years in prison. Another received a 10-year sentence and two others were given seven years in prison, Saudi television reported.

The family of Saudi critic and Washington Post journalist Khashoggi said that pardons spared five of the convicted individuals from being executed.

Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor had announced in December that five men were sentenced to death and three others to prison for the murder of Khashoggi, but that verdict has now been revised.

The ruling was previously criticised by experts in December with Agnes Callamard, the UN expert who investigated the Khashoggi killing, called the ruling the “antithesis of justice” and a “mockery” with the “masterminds” of the operation walking free.

Turkish prosecutors recently put 20 Saudi officials on trial in absentia over the murder of Khashoggi, including a former adviser to the Crown Prince who was found not guilty in Saudi Arabia.

Khashoggi was killed in October 2018 after entering the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul to collect documents he needed to marry his fianc. Turkish officials said that his body was dismembered and removed from the building.

The murder generated international outrage and damaged Saudi Arabia’s international reputation.

A UN report said that evidence suggests the execution would have required “significant government coordination, resources and finances” and found that Khashoggi was the victim of a “premeditated extrajudicial execution”.

“Every expert consulted finds it inconceivable that an operation of this scale could be implemented without the Crown Prince being aware at a minimum, that some sort of mission of a criminal nature, directed at Mr Khashoggi, was being launched,” the report by UN special rapporteur Agnes Callamard said.