The Washington Center for Human Rights has successfully conducted a Congressional Briefing titled “The Case for Accountability Six Years after the Murder of Khashoggi.” The event was moderated by Sherif Mansour, a civil society, human rights and democracy advocate held on 03 Oct 2024 at the Ford House office building. The panel of speakers included Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of DAWN; Abdullah Alaoudh, Director of Countering Authoritarianism at MEDC; Saif Al Mothana, Advocacy Director at the Washington Center for Human Rights; Loghman Fattahi, Advocacy Manager at the Committee to Protect Journalists; and Karen Attiah, columnist for the Washington Post.
Six years have passed since the cruel murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi national and vocal critic of the Saudi administration. On October 2, 2018, Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to gather a document required for his upcoming marriage. He was brutally killed inside the consulate by a group of 15 Saudi agents and his corpse was dismembered by a bone saw. To date, his remains have not been discovered.
Investigations have uncovered that the Saudi regime planned and executed Khashoggi’s murder. A 2019 investigation by UN Special Rapporteur Agnes Calmard figured that Khashoggi’s murder was the outcome of extensive planning and coordination by high-level Saudi officials, and required considerable human and financial resources.
Governments, including partners of Saudi Arabia, have failed to take any substantial measures to ensure those responsible for Khashoggi’s murder are brought to justice. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan initially pledged in 2018 to hold those responsible for Khashoggi’s murder accountable, but in 2022 Turkish authorities moved the trial of 26 suspects to Saudi Arabia, all but ensuring that those concerned would continue to dodge culpability.
The U.S. government initially appeared poised to push for accountability but has since retreated. In late 2018, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution accusing the crown prince of Khashoggi’s killing, a strong denunciation of then-President Trump’s controversial comments in which he declined to implicate Mohammed bin Salman for Khashoggi’s murder.
