On October 2, 2023, it has been five years since the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. Saudi Arabia has claimed multiple times that the case has been closed and that the perpetrators have been tried, with sentences initially handed down as capital punishment but later reduced to imprisonment.
Despite these repeated official statements, tracking the course of the case confirms that Saudi Arabia has disregarded international laws and standards in its handling of the crime since its occurrence. Furthermore, it has not responded to international calls and investigations.
A week after Jamal Khashoggi's forced disappearance, special rapporteurs affiliated with the United Nations issued a statement calling for an immediate and independent international investigation into the case. The rapporteurs emphasized the importance of identifying those responsible for the disappearance and the mastermind behind it, bringing them to justice, and stressed the necessity of full cooperation between Saudi and Turkish authorities to resolve it. The experts also expressed their concerns that Khashoggi's disappearance was directly linked to his criticism of Saudi policies in recent years.
On October 26, 2018, Agnes Callamard, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, emphasized the need for an international investigation. She stated that this call was due to the nature of the crime, the victim, the perpetrators, and the location of the incident.
On October 31, 2018, which was the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, UN experts affirmed that the United Nations and the international community had failed to address the enforced disappearance and killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
After 4 months of the crime, in February 2019, Agnes Callamard submitted her preliminary observations based on the investigation she conducted. Callamard accused Saudi Arabia of obstructing the investigation, preventing investigators from accessing the crime scene for 13 days, along with attempts to remove criminal evidence and using diplomatic immunity to escape accountability.
In March 2019, as Saudi Arabia began closed-door trials of those accused of killing journalist Jamal Khashoggi and rejected calls for an international investigation, Agnes Callamard stated that "the closed-door trials in Saudi Arabia of those accused of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi have failed to meet international standards." She criticized the lack of transparency in the investigations and the Saudi legal procedures.
In June 2019, the Special Rapporteur's report was released, which found credible evidence warranting further investigation into the responsibility of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his advisor Saud al-Qahtani for the crime. Callamard called for an international criminal investigation. The report stated that Khashoggi's killing constituted an international crime, and other states should invoke universal jurisdiction to prosecute it. It urged those states to "take the necessary measures to establish their jurisdiction over the crime of extrajudicial execution under international law."
In December 2019, it was affirmed that "impunity for the killing of a journalist can usually reveal political repression, corruption, abuse of power, propaganda, and even international complicity; all of these elements are present in Khashoggi's murder."
In front of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, during the discussion of the Special Rapporteur's report on Khashoggi's killing, many countries endorsed Callamard's demands, criticized the investigations carried out by Saudi Arabia, and called for holding the actual perpetrators of the crime accountable.
In 2020, after final verdicts were issued against 8 individuals accused by the Saudi prosecution in the crime, Callamard sarcastically tweeted about the "unfair and non-transparent" trial and the "illegitimate and illegal" verdicts, considering that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman remained protected from any form of investigation. She called for not allowing the exoneration of those involved in the Khashoggi murder through those verdicts.
The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights notes that all statements and investigation results have not led to any official and serious investigation in Saudi Arabia regarding the responsibility of Mohammed bin Salman. Therefore, the official handling of international investigations and their findings reflects a complete disregard for international laws and obligations. It clearly shows the impossibility of holding those actually responsible for the crime accountable. After the investigation results were released, Saudi Ambassador to the United Nations Abdallah Al-Mouallimi criticized them, considering that they relied on unreliable articles and sources, while Saudi representative in Geneva Mishal Al-Balawi attacked the Special Rapporteur before the Human Rights Council.
In addition to non-cooperation with the investigation and disregarding its findings, Saudi Arabia has resorted to threatening those responsible for it. In March 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Office confirmed the accuracy of statements made by Agnès Callamard to The Guardian, in which she claimed that a Saudi official threatened her, stating that "her case would be taken care of" if she did not tone down her involvement in investigating the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
ESOHR believes that the recent statements by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman regarding the closure of the case and the repeated assertion that the killing was accidental, without taking actual responsibility for it, further solidify the impunity surrounding the laws and investigations. The organization considers that despite 5 years passing since the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, it has not been closed, with his body's fate still unknown, along with at least 139 other bodies held in custody, and the possibility of such actions recurring while the same repressive and violent approach persists.