Jamal Khashoggi’s Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, told journalists: “We trust in Turkish justice.”
Twenty Saudi nationals have gone on trial in absentia in Turkey for the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
Khashoggi, a prominent critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed by a team of Saudi agents inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.
The defendants include two former aides to the prince, who denies involvement.
Saudi Arabia, which rejected Turkey’s extradition request, convicted eight people over the murder last year.
Five were sentenced to death for directly participating in the killing, while three others were handed prison sentences for covering up the crime.
The Saudi trial was dismissed as “the antithesis of justice” by a UN Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard, who concluded that Khashoggi was “the victim of a deliberate, premeditated execution” for which the Saudi state was responsible.
What happened at the trial?
Khashoggi’s Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, was allowed to attend the hearing.
She later told journalists gathered outside the courtroom that she found the process emotionally and spiritually debilitating.
Ms Cengiz expressed confidence in the Turkish judicial system and declared: “Our search for justice will continue in Turkey as well as in everywhere we can.”
Ms Callamard, who was also at the hearing, said: “We have not moved the killing of Jamal Khashoggi into a formal setting that the international community can recognise, because the trial in Saudi Arabia could not be given credibility and legitimacy.”
“Here for the first time, we have the hitmen being indicted and we have a number of those have commissioned the crime,” she added.(BBC)
