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Saudi Arabia rejects 'internationalisation of Khashoggi’s case'

March 15, 2019 at 4:26 am

Jamal Khashoggi speaking at AlSharq Forum conference [AlSharq Forum]

The Saudi Human Rights Commission yesterday announced its rejection to any foreign interference in the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder case.

“Saudi Arabia categorically rejects any talk about the internationalisation of Khashoggi’s case,” the rights commission’s head, Bandar bin Mohammed Al-Aiban, said during the United Nations Human Rights Council’s meeting in the Swiss capital of Geneva.

“We [Saudi Arabia] have taken those measures required for us to resolve this heinous crime,” Al-Aiban stressed, adding that the kingdom was bringing the accused killers to justice.

He pointed out that justice in the kingdom was operating in accordance with “the international law,” stressing on the system’s “transparency.”

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 Launching an international investigation, the Saudi official noted, would be “tantamount to the international community doubting the integrity of our [kingdom’s] judicial apparatus.”

Al-Abian’s remarks came following a recent US report which claimed that the Saudi government had not provided a “detailed explanation on the direction of the investigation into Khashoggi’s death.” On Wednesday, the US state department issued its annual Human Rights Report for 2018, in which it monitored the human rights situation in some 200 countries and regions across the globe.

Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist working for The Washington Post, was killed shortly after he entered the Saudi Consulate in Turkey’s Istanbul on 2 October. The Saudi authorities had offered shifting explanations for his disappearance. After eighteen days of denial and conflicting interpretations, Riyadh said Khashoggi died in a brawl, but eventually, it admitted that the killing was premeditated.

The authorities later announced that it had arrested 18 citizens whom they believed to be accomplices in the murder case, but did not provide details about their identities.

Last week, three dozen Western countries, including all 28 European Union members, called on Saudi Arabia to cooperate with the UN-led investigation into the murder case.

While Riyadh abstains from providing information about the killing, politicians believe that Turkey must continue to push the international community’s interference and to transfer the case to the International Criminal Court.