Saudi Arabia to Seek Death Penalty for 5 Accused in Khashoggi Killing

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor said on Thursday that he was requesting the death penalty for five people suspected of involvement in the killing of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the country’s consulate in Istanbul.

Speaking to reporters in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, a spokesman for the public prosecutor said that the 15-man team sent to confront Mr. Khashoggi had orders to return him to the kingdom, but instead made a decision on the spot to kill him after he resisted and to dismember his body.

The Saudi prosecutor’s account on Thursday appeared to contradict previous statements from both the Saudi government and senior White House officials about Saudi conclusions regarding the killing on Oct. 2 of Mr. Khashoggi, a Virginia resident who wrote columns for The Washington Post that were critical of some Saudi policies.

Before Thursday, the Saudis had most recently acknowledged evidence from Turkey that Mr. Khashoggi was killed in a deliberate, premeditated assassination.

The admission on Thursday that the killers had dismembered Mr. Khashoggi’s body to dispose of the remains appeared consistent with that. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in interviews, had credited Saudi Arabia with acknowledging the premeditated character of the killing as part of the Saudi investigation.

But the Saudi account offered on Thursday appeared to double back to previous explanations that the operation had been intended only to question or capture Mr. Khashoggi.

While acknowledging that the killers had quickly cut up the body, the Saudi prosecutor sought to portray the dismemberment as a spur-of-the-moment decision after an unintended killing. President Trump had previously dismissed that explanation as “the worst cover-up ever.”

The case has caused widespread international outrage and the largest foreign relations crisis for the kingdom since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The statement on Thursday sought to reinforce previous Saudi claims that the team in Riyadh had acted without the consent of the kingdom’s top leadership, meaning King Salman and his son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Several current and former officials from Turkey, the United States and elsewhere have said that such a complex and risky operation could not have been conducted without the knowledge of the crown prince, although no evidence linking him directly to the crime has been made public.

Turkish officials have said that Mr. Khashoggi was killed in a premeditated assassination carried out by the Saudi team, whose members flew to Turkey to do the job.

The team, the Turks say, strangled Mr. Khashoggi soon after he entered the consulate, where he was hoping to obtain the documents he needed to marry his Turkish fiancée, and then dismembered him.

Turkey has also released names, photographs and videos of the team in Istanbul, including images of one man who was wearing Mr. Khashoggi’s clothes after the killing and was tracked walking around Istanbul in an effort to leave a fake surveillance trail.

The Saudi spokesman said he could not identify any of the suspects because the investigation is ongoing.

Mr. Khashoggi’s body has not been found. Turkish officials have speculated that the Saudi agents dissolved it in acid; on Thursday, the Saudi spokesman repeated his government’s claim it had been given to a Turkish collaborator who then disposed of it.

Saudi Arabia’s story of what happened to Mr. Khashoggi changed repeatedly after his disappearance was first reported, with top officials insisting at first that he had left the consulate safely and acknowledging only weeks later that he had been killed inside the Saudi diplomatic building.

Source: The New York Times, Ben Hubbard, David D. Kirkpatrick, November 15, 2018

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