AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): The family of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a human rights group that he founded have filed a lawsuit in a U.S. court accusing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of personally ordering Khashoggi's brutal execution in order to end his criticism of the Saudi regime.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Khashoggi's fiancee Hatice Cengiz and Democracy for the Arab World Now or DAWN, the human rights organization that Khashoggi founded shortly before his death.
The lawsuit names Prince Mohammed and a host of Saudi Ministry of Interior officials, accusing them of a “brutal and brazen crime” that was the result of “weeks of planning" and premeditation.
Khashoggi disappeared on October 2, 2018 after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, seeking documents that would allow him to marry Cengiz, a Turkish national who was waiting outside the building. He never emerged.
Turkish officials allege Khashoggi was killed and then dismembered with a bone saw inside the consulate. His body has not been found. Turkey apparently had the consulate bugged and shared audio of the killing with the US intelligence agencies, among others.
US and Western intelligence agencies have said the crown prince is responsible for the killing and that an operation of this magnitude could not have happened without his knowledge.
A prominent Saudi government critic, Khashoggi had founded DAWN in order to push for democratic and human rights reform in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Arab world.
Tuesday's suit alleges that the defendants “saw Mr. Khashoggi’s actions in the United States as an existential threat” to their political interests and sought to lure him inside the consulate where a specially dispatched hit squad awaited.
“Defendants resolved to put an end to Mr. Khashoggi’s efforts by any means necessary,” the suit states.
Saudi officials initially offering conflicting accounts, including claiming that Khashoggi had left the building unharmed. But amid mounting international pressure, they settled on the explanation that Khashoggi's death was a tragic accident, saying that the team was under orders to merely persuade him to return to the kingdom.
The official account is that the meeting unexpectedly turned violent, resulting in Khashoggi's accidental death.
Saudi Arabia is one of the top executioners in the world, with more than 2,000 people executed between 1985 and 2016. Suspects convicted of terrorism, homicide, rape, armed robbery and drug trafficking face death penalty.
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source : Hausa TV
Wednesday
21 October 2020
7:56:43 AM
1079814
The family of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a human rights group that he founded have filed a lawsuit in a U.S. court accusing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of personally ordering Khashoggi's brutal execution in order to end his criticism of the Saudi regime.