UN report: “credible evidence” links Saudi crown prince to Khashoggi’s murder

A United Nations investigation has concluded that Saudi Arabia is responsible for the “extrajudicial killing” of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and that there is “credible evidence” to investigate the involvement of high-level Saudi officials in his murder — including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).

The approximately 100-page report outlines, in sometimes explicit detail, Khashoggi’s assassination inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018.

Agnes Callamard, a special rapporteur for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, concluded after a nearly six-month investigation that Khashoggi was the victim of a “deliberate, premeditated execution” and his kidnapping and murder violated international law. She added that Khashoggi may have been tortured.

The CIA has said “with high confidence” Crown Prince bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, ordered the killing of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who’d become increasingly critical of Riyadh. But the Trump administration has been reluctant to sever ties with MBS and the Saudi regime, whose friendship Washington is relying on closely as tensions escalate with Iran in the region.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has changed its story a few times since Khashoggi’s death, first saying the journalist left the consulate through a back entrance, then claiming he was accidentally killed during a fistfight gone awry. The Saudi prosecutors later admitted the murder was premeditated but continued to put distance between the journalist’s death and any involvement by MBS.

But the report treats with great skepticism the notion that the crown prince was unaware of the Khashoggi operation. “Every expert consulted finds it inconceivable that an operation of this scale could be implemented without the crown prince being aware, at a minimum, that some sort of mission of a criminal nature, directed at Mr. Khashoggi, was being launched,” the report states.

It also points to MBS’s organized crackdown against dissidents and activists in Saudi Arabia, noting the operation against Khashoggi has to be understood in context of this larger campaign. “At a bare minimum,” the report states, the “Crown Prince condoned this behavior and allowed the repetition and escalation of these crimes.”

This UN investigation into Khashoggi’s death relied on official statements from Turkish, Saudi, and US governments, CCTV and audio recordings, and witness testimony, according to the report. Some of these details had already been in the public domain, but the report offers a dispassionate analysis of the evidence that amounts to a chilling account of Khashoggi’s murderer. (Warning: Some explicit details follow in this story.)

Some of the most disturbing evidence comes from audio recordings from inside the consulate, including conversations before Khashoggi’s murder and during his assassination.

According to the report, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, an intelligence official, and Salah Mohammed Tubaigy, a forensics expert with the Saudi armed forces, had a conversation before Khashoggi arrived at the Saudi consulate on the afternoon of October 2:

Mr. Mutreb asked whether it will “be possible to put the trunk in a bag?” Dr. Tubaigy replied “No. Too heavy.” He expressed hope that it would “be easy.” ... There was a reference to cutting skin.

Once Khashoggi arrived, Saudi officials talked with the journalist, and suggest they are bringing him back to Saudi Arabia, claiming to have an Interpol arrest warrant. After that, the audio picks up “sounds of a struggle.” The report suggests that during this time Saudi operatives may have attempted to sedate and suffocate Khashoggi with a plastic bag.

“Did he sleep?” someone on the audio tape says, per the report. “He raises his head.” “Keep pushing.”

The report also documents that the “sound of plastic sheets ‘wrapping’ can be heard.” Turkish intelligence officials have said Khashoggi was dismembered using a bone saw, but the special rapporteur could not confirm this evidence.

Callamard harshly criticized Saudi Arabia’s response to Khashoggi’s death, including limiting Turkish investigators’ access to the crime scene, which showed evidence of “professional, thorough, if not forensic cleaning of the crime scenes.” The report suggested this could amount to obstruction.

The report dismissed the trial currently underway in Saudi Arabia, saying it does not “deliver credible accountability.” She called for the Saudi trial to be suspended, and instead recommended the United Nations conduct its own criminal investigation to hold high-level officials accountable.

Callamard also questioned some of the international responses to Khashoggi’s death, including the efficacy of targeted sanctions. The United States imposed sanctions on 17 individuals for their role in Khashoggi’s murder, but those did not target the high-level officials — such as MBS — who’ve been implicated in the assassination. The report implies that such targeted sanctions appear as a “smokescreen, diverting attention away from those actually responsible.”

The latest UN report is likely to put the spotlight on Khashoggi’s brutal killing once again, and the complicity of MBS. But, so far, the Trump administration has avoided taking a tough stand against their ally in the region.

If anything, the Trump administration has continued to pursue closer ties with the kingdom, over objections of some bipartisan members of Congress. In December, the Senate voted to condemn MBS for his role in Khashoggi’s killing — a mostly symbolic rebuke.

Congress has also tried to push back on the US-Saudi relationship in the wake of Khashoggi’s murder, by passing a resolution that would limit support for the Saudi-led coalition in the war in Yemen. Trump vetoed it in April. And in May, the Trump administration sent approximately $8 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, exploiting a legal loophole that circumvented congressional approval.