Jamal Khashoggi, a former editor-in-chief of the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan, and a columnist for The Washington Post, was killed shortly after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, where he had gone to obtain a document for his upcoming marriage to his Turkish fiancée Hatice Cengiz. He never came out and his body has not been found.
Khashoggi had fled to the United States from Saudi Arabia in June 2017 amid a crackdown on dissent and began writing critically about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Gulf state’s de facto ruler and son of King Salman. Khashoggi previously served as an advisor to the government. Months before his death, Khashoggi condemned the arrest of Al-Watan columnist Saleh al-Shehi.
Turkish intelligence officials, who transcribed an audio recording of Khashoggi’s death, alleged that the journalist was killed and dismembered with a saw inside the consulate by a 15-man Saudi hit team dispatched to Istanbul.
The CIA quickly concluded that bin Salman had ordered the murder, after U.S. intelligence intercepts found that the crown prince had ordered Khashoggi to be brought home.
In November 2018, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned 17 individuals for their role in the killing, including senior government official Saud al-Qahtani and his subordinate Maher Mutreb.
In December 2018, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution holding bin Salman responsible for Khashoggi’s death. After initially saying that Khashoggi had left the consulate alive, Saudi authorities then said that the journalist died in a fistfight with agents who were trying to return him to the kingdom. They have consistently denied any high-level culpability.
In a June 2019 report, Agnès Callamard, who was then the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, concluded Khashoggi was the victim of a “premediated extrajudicial execution.” She determined there was "credible evidence, warranting further investigation of high-level Saudi officials’ individual liability, including that of the Crown Prince."
In December 2019, a Saudi court sentenced five unnamed government agents to death for the killing and three others to a combined 24 years in prison for covering up the crime. Callamard condemned the trial as a “mockery of justice.” The death sentences were changed to prison terms after Khashoggi’s sons forgave the killers.
In 2020, Turkey began the trial of 20 Saudi suspects in absentia, including al-Qahtani and former deputy intelligence chief Ahmad Hassan Mohammed al Asiri. In 2022, Turkey halted the trial and transferred it to Saudi Arabia as it sought to improve relations with Riyadh, in a move condemned by CPJ.
In February 2021, a declassified U.S. intelligence report found that bin Salman approved the murder, based on his previous support for silencing dissidents abroad, his consolidation of power over security and intelligence services, and the involvement of his personal protective detail — nicknamed the Tiger Squad — in the killing.
The following day, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on al Asiri, who it said was the operation’s ringleader and coordinated with al-Qahtani to dispatch the assassination team. It also sanctioned the Tiger Squad, officially known as the Rapid Intervention Force.
The State Department also announced the “Khashoggi Ban,” imposing visa restrictions on 76 Saudis believed to have threatened dissidents overseas, without revealing their names.
Despite promising on the 2019 campaign trail to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over Khashoggi’s killing, President Joe Biden fist-bumped bin Salman on a visit to the kingdom in July 2022, drawing widespread condemnation.
In November 2022, the Biden administration told a U.S. court that bin Salman should be immune in a civil lawsuit filed by Khashoggi’s fiancée Cengiz and Democracy for the Arab World Now, a rights group founded by the journalist, seeking civil damages against bin Salman and more than 20 alleged accomplices, including al-Qahtani and al Asiri. The case was dismissed soon after as the court said it lacked jurisdiction over the defendants.