[ad_1]
The verdict was announced by the Riyadh court on Monday afternoon. Five of them are sentenced to 20 years in prison and three to between seven and ten years, writes the al-Arabiya television channel.
Five of those convicted had previously been sentenced to death.
That none of them get The death penalty stems from the fact that Khashoggi’s family left a message in May this year that they did not want them to be sentenced to death. Therefore, under Saudi law, a court cannot impose the death penalty.
It was on October 2, 2018, when journalist and critic of the Saudi regime Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Some surveillance camera footage and an audio recording from inside the consulate are Khashoggi’s last signs of life.
Turkish researchers found later evidence that Khashoggi, who wrote for the Washington Post, among other things, had been murdered and that his body was likely dismembered before being removed from the consulate. Investigators also concluded that Saudi Arabia sent 15 people to Istanbul to assassinate Khashoggi and then dispose of the body.
The body has never been found and there is no information in SPA’s brief summary of how the murder would have occurred or what different roles the convicts would have had in the murder.
Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, was highly critical of the court ruling. Cengiz called the verdict “a mockery of justice”:
“Today’s message from Saudi Arabia it is a complete mockery of justice. The Saudi authorities end the case without the world knowing the truth about who was behind the murder of Jamal. Who planned it? Who ordered it? Where is the body? These are the most important questions and they remain unanswered. The international community will not accept this farce. “I am more determined than ever to fight for justice for Jamal,” Hatice Cengiz wrote on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/mercan_resifi/status/1302993904430710786
A spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday night that the verdict was far from what Turkey had hoped for and that Saudi authorities were being asked to cooperate with Turkey in the ongoing murder investigation in the country.
[ad_2]
