The fiance of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi said on Monday that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman should be sentenced “without delay” following the release of a US intelligence report that found the powerful Saudi monarch had approved the killing.
“If the Crown Prince is not punished, he will forever signal that the main culprit could escape murder which would endanger all of us and become a stain on our humanity,” Hatice Sengiz said in a statement posted. Twitter Early Monday. “It would be the greatest shame for humanity if justice were denied in the end.”
The Turkish national, Kengiz, was responding to a long-awaited U.S. intelligence report that revealed on Friday that Saudi Arabia had approved an operation in Istanbul to capture or kill De facto leader Salman Khashoggi.
“We base this assessment on the Crown Prince’s decision-making control in the state,” the report said. Steps to quell dissent. “
When the overall conclusion of the report was reported two years ago, President J. Biden announced it, reversing the decision of his predecessor, former President Donald Trump.
On Friday, Secretary of State Anthony Blink also announced that Saudi 76 Saudi individuals accused of harassing dissidents were subject to visa bans, and that the Treasury Department had approved a Rapid Intervention Force or RIF and a former deputy head of the Saudi intelligence department.
“People involved in the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi should be held accountable,” said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. “The United States remains united with journalists and political dissidents in opposing threats of violence and intimidation.”
However, in an interview with Mehdi Hassan Show In his public statement on Sunday and Monday, Sengiz expressed frustration that no further action had been taken.
“I thank Mr. President Biden and his administration for releasing this report.” “I think it’s a really important and huge step right now, but it wouldn’t be meaningless without taking that step.”
Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics
“Now we have the truth … now is the time to take action.”
Sengiz did not specify how he would like the Biden administration to hold the Crown Prince accountable. In his written statement, he called on the Crown Prince to reconsider his decision to punish and shake hands with world leaders “who have been convicted of murder but have not yet been convicted.”
Asked what message he wanted to send to the Crown Prince, Kengiz said: “He will never leave her and she will suffer for his life.”
Washington In October 2018, at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post and a permanent resident of the U.S., was assassinated and dismantled by a team of intelligence officers with ties to the Crown Prince. His remains were never found.
In 2019, Sengiz told NBC News that she had traveled to London to distance herself from Istanbul’s “crime scene” and learn English. It is unclear whether he still lives in the city. Her Twitter profile Says he is a researcher interested in Omani culture and practices based between Turkey and Oman.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry issued a statement Friday through the country’s state news agency, saying the Saudi government “clearly denies the insulting and wrong conclusions” in the report on state leadership.
“The state condemned this heinous crime and its leadership took necessary steps to ensure that such a tragic incident does not happen again in the future,” he added.
The Crown Prince said he was killed without his consent, but in an interview with PBS’s “Frontline” in 2019, he said, “I’ve got all the responsibility, because it happened under my watch.”
That year, eight men were also convicted in a Saudi Arabian court of killing Khashoggi – a case called by many international observers an experiment.
Five were sentenced to death, but this was changed in 20 years after they were allegedly pardoned by Khashoggi’s relatives.
“The issue of Khashoggi’s assassination is closed,” Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud, Saudi Arabia’s longtime ambassador to Washington, told the Lebanese news agency on Monday.
The former ambassador said the CIA could not confirm the motive behind the killing and said the state had accepted the moral responsibility of Crown Prince Mohammed in the case.
“There was a trial or conviction and others were acquitted,” he told the Lebanese News Agency. “All Saudis were hurt by this crime.”
Peter Jerry and Alfred Arian Contributed.
