The Khashoggi Killing

Background

Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi journalist who across more than three decades had occupied a singular position within the Saudi political establishment: an interlocutor between Saudi state and Western audiences, a commentator on Saudi affairs in Arabic and English, and at successive points an adviser to senior figures of the House of Saud. He had served as a media adviser to Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud during Prince Turki's posts as Saudi Ambassador to the United Kingdom (2002–2005) and to the United States (2005–2007). His Saudi-establishment position made his post-2017 turn into open criticism of the Saudi Government — and particularly of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud — exceptional in its institutional weight.¹

In June 2017 Khashoggi went into self-exile, settling in the Washington, D.C. area and becoming a contributing columnist for the Washington Post. His columns, published from September 2017 onward, criticised the consolidation of authority under Mohammed bin Salman, the November 2017 detention of Saudi princes and businessmen at the Ritz-Carlton Riyadh, the Saudi-Emirati intervention in Yemen, and the broader trajectory of the Saudi state under the Crown Prince. The columns drew sustained Saudi state attention, including reported attempts by senior Saudi officials and intermediaries to persuade Khashoggi to return to Saudi Arabia.²

In late September 2018 Khashoggi sought to obtain documents from the Saudi authorities certifying his divorce from his previous wife, in connection with his planned marriage to Hatice Cengiz, a Turkish citizen and PhD student. He attended the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on 28 September 2018, was advised that the documents would need to be prepared, and was instructed to return on 2 October.³

The Operation

Across 2 October 2018, a 15-person Saudi team travelled to Istanbul on two private aircraft. The team included Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, an intelligence officer and former diplomatic security officer; Salah Mohammed al-Tubaigy, a forensic specialist and the head of the Saudi Scientific Council of Forensic Medicine; Fahad Shabib al-Balawi, a member of the Saudi Royal Guard; and twelve other operatives, several of whom had personal protection responsibilities for the Crown Prince. The team's composition — including a senior forensic specialist with the technical capacity for the disposal of human remains — has been the subject of substantial subsequent reconstruction.⁴

Khashoggi entered the Saudi Consulate at approximately 1.14 p.m. on 2 October 2018. He never emerged. Hatice Cengiz, who had waited for him outside the consulate building, alerted Turkish authorities. Across the following days the Saudi Government variously characterised events: initially that Khashoggi had left the consulate; subsequently that there had been an altercation; subsequently that Khashoggi had died as a result of an unintended fistfight; subsequently that the killing had been deliberate but unauthorised; and subsequently that it had been the work of "rogue" operatives. The basic outlines of the operation were progressively established by Turkish authorities, who had recorded audio from inside the consulate building.⁵

The Turkish recordings — substantially provided to the United Nations Special Rapporteur, to the US Central Intelligence Agency, and to selected international press — captured the period of Khashoggi's killing. The UN Special Rapporteur Agnès Callamard's June 2019 report concluded, on the basis of the recordings and other evidence, that Khashoggi had been killed in a premeditated operation, that his body had been dismembered with a bone saw brought by the team, and that the killing had been "an extrajudicial execution for which the State of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is responsible under international human rights law." The Saudi Government has not produced or returned Khashoggi's remains.⁶

Disclosure

The Turkish Government's progressive disclosure of evidence — through President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's public statements, the leaking of details to Turkish and international press, and the eventual transmission of recordings to selected international authorities — produced what Callamard subsequently characterised as "an unprecedented public investigation of an extrajudicial execution." The basic facts of the operation entered international public discourse within days of the event, and the Saudi Government's successive accounts each followed, rather than preceded, the surfacing of Turkish-held evidence.⁷

The institutional response in successive jurisdictions varied. The US Trump Administration's response was characterised by sustained statements by President Trump emphasising the strategic importance of the Saudi-US relationship, balanced by Treasury Magnitsky-Act sanctions of fifteen Saudis and a sixteenth on 15 November 2018, and by Senate Resolution 91 of December 2018 — passed unanimously — finding that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was responsible for Khashoggi's murder. The most consequential US Government action came under the Biden Administration: the 26 February 2021 declassification by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence of an assessment concluding that "Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill" Khashoggi.⁸

In Türkiye, an in absentia trial of 26 Saudi nationals by the Istanbul 11th Heavy Penal Court ran from 2020 to April 2022, when the proceedings were transferred to Saudi jurisdiction following Turkish-Saudi rapprochement. In Saudi Arabia, the Public Prosecution charged eleven defendants in November 2018; the Riyadh Criminal Court issued judgments in December 2019 — five death sentences (subsequently commuted in May 2020 following pardons granted by Khashoggi's son Salah after substantial public Saudi pressure), three terms of seven to ten years' imprisonment, and three acquittals. The Saudi proceedings did not address the question of senior-leadership authorisation.⁹

Legacy

The Khashoggi case has remained, more than five years after the event, the most-cited contemporary reference for the question of state-intelligence-service responsibility in the killing of journalists, and for the question of how Western governments and institutions should respond to such operations conducted by partner states. The post-event period saw substantial reorganisation of Western policy toward the Saudi Government — including the Biden Administration's February 2021 announcement of a recalibration of the relationship — but the basic structure of US-Saudi cooperation, including in the intelligence and security domains, was substantially preserved.¹⁰

For the institutional history of the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency specifically, the case has been the subject of substantial subsequent reorganisation. The May 2017 reorganisation under Mohammed bin Salman that consolidated multiple Saudi intelligence and security functions, the post-Khashoggi removal of Saud al-Qahtani (a senior royal-court adviser identified by US Treasury and other authorities as having coordinated elements of the operation), and the ongoing consolidation of authority under the Crown Prince have together reshaped the Saudi intelligence apparatus.¹¹

For the broader question of the international response to extrajudicial killings, the case has produced the most extensive UN human-rights-mandated investigation of any contemporary state-intelligence-attributed killing. The Callamard report's methodology — drawing on Turkish-provided forensic and audio evidence, on cross-referenced commercial flight and travel data, and on substantial documentary work — has been characterised in subsequent academic literature as a model for international investigation of extraterritorial killings.¹²

Related agencies

This dossier relates principally to the General Intelligence Presidency of Saudi Arabia. The country-level context is on the page for Saudi Arabia; the post-event US response context is relevant to the United States.

Sources & Further Reading

1. Joseph A. Kéchichian, Faysal: Saudi Arabia's King for All Seasons (University Press of Florida, 2008); Karen Elliott House, On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines — and Future (Knopf, 2012).
2. Jamal Khashoggi, Washington Post columns archive, September 2017 – October 2018.
3. Hatice Cengiz testimony to UN Special Rapporteur Agnès Callamard; Turkish Government statements on the consulate visits.
4. Agnès Callamard, UN Special Rapporteur, Annex: Investigation into the unlawful death of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi, A/HRC/41/CRP.1, 19 June 2019.
5. Callamard report, op. cit.; Bryan Fogel (director), The Dissident (2020); David D. Kirkpatrick et al., "The C.I.A. Concludes That Saudi Crown Prince Ordered the Killing of Jamal Khashoggi," New York Times, 16 November 2018.
6. Callamard report, op. cit., paragraphs 80–123 (operational reconstruction) and 213–219 (legal characterisation).
7. Agnès Callamard, "Khashoggi Killing: UN Human Rights Expert Says Saudi Arabia is Responsible for 'Premeditated Execution'," statement of 19 June 2019.
8. ODNI, Assessment of the Saudi Government's Role in the Killing of Jamal Khashoggi, declassified 26 February 2021; US Department of the Treasury, Magnitsky Act designations, 15 November 2018; Senate Joint Resolution 91, 116th Congress.
9. Istanbul 11th Heavy Penal Court, in absentia proceedings, 2020–April 2022; Saudi Public Prosecution and Riyadh Criminal Court proceedings, 2018–2020.
10. "Biden, Sidelining Saudi Crown Prince, Ends Two-Decade Tradition," New York Times, 24 February 2021; Statement of President Joseph R. Biden, 26 February 2021.
11. US Department of the Treasury Magnitsky designations, op. cit.; reporting on Saud al-Qahtani in New York Times and Washington Post, 2018–2019.
12. Callamard report, op. cit.; Stephen Rapp, "Pursuing Justice for Jamal Khashoggi," Just Security, 19 June 2019.