Saudi crown prince sued over murder of Jamal Khashoggi
The fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi and a US human rights group have filed a lawsuit against Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman over the journalist’s murder in 2018.
The lawsuit, filed in Washington D.C., alleges that Khashoggi was tortured, murdered and dismembered on the orders of prince Mohammed.
The crown prince is named alongside more than 20 other Saudis in the complaint, which was brought by Khashoggi’s Turkish fiancee Hatice Cengiz and Democracy for the Arab World, an advocacy group founded by the dissident before his death.
The suit alleges that the defendants “saw Khashoggi’s actions in the United States as an existential threat to their pecuniary and other interests and, accordingly, conspired to commit the heinous acts that are the subject of this suit,” the Washington Post reported.
Lawyers Keith Harper and Faisal Gill, who are representing the plaintiffs, told reporters today that the aim of the legal action was to hold the crown prince responsible for the murder and obtain documents that revealed the truth.
Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post, was killed and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. His remains have not been found.
The gruesome murder sparked a global uproar and threatened to derail Western ties with the kingdom.
Last month a Saudi court jailed eight people for the murder, but a UN official and human rights campaigners criticised the trial, arguing that the true masterminds of the killing remained free.
Prince Mohammed has denied any involvement in the killing, but said he accepts “full responsibility” as it happened under his watch.
However, the CIA concluded in 2018 that the murder was carried out on direct orders from the crown prince.