Murder of Jamal Khashoggi

Jamal Khashoggi was a prominent Saudi journalist and former insider who had moved to the United States in 2017 and wrote columns for The Washington Post criticizing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's crackdown on dissent. On October 2, 2018, he went to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain papers for his upcoming marriage. His Turkish fiancee waited outside, but he never came out. Turkish officials soon said a team of 15 Saudi agents had flown in that day and killed him inside; his body was dismembered and has never been found. Turkish intelligence had audio recordings from the consulate.²⁵

Saudi Arabia first said he had left the building, then that he died in a fight, and finally admitted a premeditated killing by agents who acted without royal orders. In 2019 a UN special rapporteur, Agnes Callamard, called it a deliberate, premeditated execution for which the Saudi state was responsible. A Saudi court sentenced eight people, commuting five death sentences in 2020. In February 2021 the U.S. Director of National Intelligence released an assessment that the crown prince had approved an operation to capture or kill Khashoggi. He has accepted responsibility as Saudi Arabia's leader but denies ordering it.¹²³⁷