Trial starts after Istanbul court accepted 117-page indictment accusing Saudi nationals in April.
ISTANBUL/ANKARA
Turkey begins trying 20 Saudi nationals in absentia Friday over the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at Saudi Arabia’s Consulate in Istanbul.
A 117-page indictment prepared by Istanbul prosecutors accusing the Saudi nationals of involvement in the gruesome premeditated murder was accepted in April by Istanbul’s Heavy Penal Court No. 11.
The first hearing will be held at the Istanbul Caglayan Courthouse.
Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, was killed and dismembered by a group of Saudi operatives shortly after he entered the country’s consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018 to obtain a number of marriage-related documents.
His body was never recovered.
In the indictment, Khashoggi is named as the victim and his fiancée Hatice Cengiz as the plaintiff.
It accuses Ahmed Bin Mohammed Al-Asiri and Saud Al-Qahtani of incitement to deliberate killing through torture and seeks separate aggravated life sentences for both.
It also accuses 18 other Saudi nationals — Mansour Othman M. Abahussain, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, Salah Mohammed al-Tubaigy, Mustafa Mohammed M. Almadani, Saif Saad al-Qahtani, Thaar Ghaleb T. al-Harbi, Badr Lafi al-Otaibi, Turki Musharraf M. Alshehri, Fahad Shabib A. Albalawi, Waleed Abdullah M. Alshehri, Mohammad Saad al-Zahrani, Naif Hassan Saad al-Arifi, Abdulaziz Mohammed al-Hawsawi, Khalid Aedh G. Alotaibi, Saad Meshal al-Bostani, Muflih Shaya M. Almuslih, Ahmed Abdullah A. Almuzaini and Saad Muid Alqarni — and recommends separate aggravated life sentences for each.
The 18 were in consensus over killing Khashoggi since the beginning if he refused to return to Saudi Arabia and they acted on the mutual decision to commit the crime, according to the indictment.
From the indictment
The indictment stated that suspect Abahussain, working as a major general and intelligence officer in Saudi Arabia, was assigned in the office of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and was instructed by Al-Asiri to bring Khashoggi back to the country and to kill him if he resisted. It added that Abahussain assembled a 15-man hit squad, including himself, for the murder.
Abahussain also distributed tasks among the squad, separating them into three groups: intelligence, logistics and negotiation.
Mutreb was the head of the negotiation group, while Abahussain involved al-Tubaigy, a forensic specialist, in the 15-men team in case the victim resisted and wanted to leave and as a result, would be killed.
Abahussain also determined the place to meet Khashoggi as the working office at the Istanbul consulate and made plans for all contingencies before, during and after the deed.
The indictment also gave detailed information about the suspects’ entry and exit to the consulate and the hotel they stayed, providing exact timings starting from Oct. 1, 2018 — a day before the killing.
Anadolu Agency (AA)/Balkantimes.press
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