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UN Khashoggi inquiry banned from entering crime scene

January 30, 2019 at 12:14 pm

Police barricades in Istanbul, Turkey on 19 October 2018 [Şebnem Coşkun/Anadolu Agency]

A team of United Nations (UN) human rights experts carrying out an international investigation into the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi have been banned from entering the crime scene at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

Leader of the investigation Agnes Callamard and her team of rights experts recently announced that it had submitted a request to the Saudi authorities to enter the consulate’s premises and meet with Saudi officials in Istanbul, Turkish NTV reported yesterday.

The special rapporteur said that she was waiting for the Saudi authorities’ response, but explained that her team was able to carry out a survey on the area surrounding the consulate.

“We are respectfully calling on the authorities to give us access,” she was quoted by Reuters as saying.

The team arrived in Istanbul on Monday for a week-long visit to investigate the circumstances of Khashoggi’s killing on 2 October. Callamard said she had initiated the inquiry on her own, as the UN “has given no intention to conduct an international criminal investigation”.

 Khashoggi probe: UN expert meets Istanbul prosecutor

During the visit, Callamard and her team met with Istanbul’s Chief Prosecutor Irfan Fidan – who is heading the investigation – and the Turkish Foreign and Justice Ministers Mouloud Chavushoglu and Abdulhamit Gül respectively.

The expert on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary killing pointed out that she would present her report on the investigation to the UN’s Human Rights Council in June. Callamard is a long-standing advocate of human rights and freedom of expression. She was appointed as a UN special rapporteur in 2016 to investigate arbitrary executions.

Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who wrote critically about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), was killed on 2 October after he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage. He was killed in what Turkish and US officials have described as an elaborate plot.

After denying Khashoggi’s murder at the consulate for several weeks, Riyadh indicted 11 people in the killing, including members from the crown prince’s entourage. Turkish authorities have been critical of what they describe as a “lack of cooperation by Riyadh”.

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