Il caso Khashoggi: fine della partita?

  Articoli (Articles)
  Matteo Gabutti
  25 April 2022
  7 minutes, 57 seconds

Translated by Alvise Cecchetti

On the 7th of April, the Turkish Court committed in the trial in absentia of 26 defendants in relation to the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi deliberated to suspend the case and transfer it to Saudi Arabia. This action perfectly fits the context of the complex rapprochement between Ankara and Riyadh. However, it puts at extreme risk the possibility of a verdict bringing justice to the death of Khashoggi. He was probably the most renowned journalist in the Arab world. Once become so critical towards Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, for his personal safety was forced to move first to the United States and then to Turkey, still keeping working for the Washington Post. In 2018 he disappeared after having reached the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, catching the attention and the outrage of the International community on Riyadh’s government, suspected to have ordered a badly covered assassination.

A mysterious disappearance

On the 2nd of October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi goes to the Saudi consular office in Istanbul together with his girlfriend Hatice Cengiz, to take a document required to marry her. Before entering the consulate, he reassures her that nothing wrong could happen to him, but also ask her to call a consultant of President Erdogan in case he is not coming back. She waits for him for around ten hours before going back to the consulate the following morning. No one has seen the journalist, whose body is still nowadays missing, walking away from the Consulate.

At first, Saudi Arabia decided to deny everything, affirming that Khashoggi left the building after a few moments. However, this version resulted to be quite weak and from the 20th of October corrects it describing it as an undercover operation unknown to the Crown Prince which unfortunately ended with the death of Khashoggi.

Investigations and trials

The aforementioned is the narration supported by the Saudi public prosecutor during the closed trial against eleven unknown people in Riyadh. The verdict, pronounced in December 2019, committed to death five people as material killers and other three for having covered the murder. Following the forgiveness expressed by Khashoggi’s son, the execution was commuted into years of captivity, but in September 2020 the names of the eight accused were not yet known and there is no evidence that the sentence has been effectively implemented. Human Rights Watch has condemned the insufficiency of the trial if compared to international standards, while Dr Cengiz has defined it as the “absolute parody of Justice.”

On the other hand, Turkey expressed a completely different reaction. In fact, already at the end of October 2018, the general prosecutor had declared that Khashoggi had been strangled immediately after having entered the building, then dismembered and finally made to disappear.

President Erdogan exposed personally his views in the columns of the Washington Post, affirming that undoubtedly the murder was not just intentional, but even ordered by the highest figures of the Saudi government. After this, in July 2020, consequently to Riyadh’s refusal to extradite the suspects, Istanbul became the stage for a trial in absentia towards 26 men, including Saad al-Qahtani and Ahmed Asiri, all close to Crown Prince Mohammad.

The most reliable and impartial investigation is the one conducted by Agnes Callamard, a special UN speaker, described in a report published in July 2019. Having had access to the audio recording regarding what happened in the consulate given to her by Turkish intelligence, Callamard concluded that what happened to Khashoggi was an “extrajudicial murder of which Saudi Arabia is legally responsible”. She defined it as a violation of the right of life of the journalist, guaranteed by Art 6 of the International Pact on Civil and Political Rights, as well as an infringement of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, of the prohibition to use of violence outside of the own territories in times of peace and finally, a violation of the freedom of expression. Moreover, she also raised the issue that both the investigations pursued by Turkey and Saudi Arabia were cont conforming to international standards, despite the apparent determination shown by the Turkish authorities.

In fact, this determination has been drastically downsized in the last period. Last month, the Turkish prosecutor has proposed to accept the Saudi request to transfer the trial from Istanbul to Saudi Arabia and Ankara’s Ministry of Justice has agreed in this regard. Hence, the transfer happened on the 7th of April, despite the firm protests of groups defending the human rights, of Cengiz’s lawyers. This transfer does not mean per se the withdrawal from the jurisdiction of this case by the Turkish authorities, who are waiting for the first Saudi verdicts before the formal withdrawal. However, this move will presumably mean the end of the trial. In fact, Saudi authorities have more than once said meant that they consider this closed trial as the final act of the entire process.

Justice and Realpolitik

Whether it might seem illogical “give the lamb to wolves” as the advocate Ali Ceylan express the concept, we have first to consider that the one of Jamal Khashoggi has never been a mere judiciary case. The disappearance of the most important Arab journalist rose to the international headlines as an exemplary violation of the freedom of expression, happened in Turkey: a country full of contradictions and that casts sinister shadows over one of the most important allied of the US: Saudi Arabia. Hence, this affair has acquired a clear political value. Political and strategic have also been the management of the case by Turkey.

In 2018, Turkey was considering Saudi Arabia as a direct rival for the leadership of the Middle East in general and the Sunni world in particular. The disappearance of Khashoggi was representing a unique occasion for Erdogan to discredit the Saudi government and incense Turkey, despite the ambiguous relation of the Turkish government with human rights. For this reason, no wonder why Turkey shared important details to put pressure on the Saudis and to keep this affair on the front pages of journals and broadcasts. Erdogan himself declared that had personally shared with representatives of the UK, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia and the United States the audio files containing the moment of the journalist’s death.

After a while, the Turkish judiciary activity had economic repercussions on the country. Saudi Arabia and its allies started a non-declared boycott against Turkish exporters. The recent financial crisis and the consequent devaluation of the Turkish Lira have pushed Erdogan to search for a rapprochement with the Al-Sauds.

That’s why the last few years the Turkish Ministry for Foreign Affairs visited Saudi Arabia for the first time after the affair Khashoggi and why the last month the two countries have been taking the first steps leading to the transfer of the trial to Riyadh. The automatic approval of decisions undertaken by the Turkish government by the Criminal Court of Justice of Istanbul – evidence of the submission of the Turkish Justice system to Ankara’s Realpolitik – has been firmly condemned by Human Rights Watch. For Michael Page, vice director of the Middle East department of Human Right Watch, this move will preclude any real possibility of justice for Khashoggi’s case.



Fonti consultate per il presente articolo

Al Jazeera, ‘Turkey Eyes Jamal Khashoggi Murder Trial Move to Saudi Arabia’ (Al Jazeera1 April 2022) <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/1/turkey-to-ok-khashoggi-murder-trials-move-to-saudi-arabia> accessed 14 September 2022

BBC, ‘Jamal Khashoggi: All You Need to Know about Saudi Journalist’s Death’ BBC News (11 December 2018) <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45812399> accessed 14 September 2022

Bucci L, ‘La Crisi Economica Turca: Problemi Strutturali E Scelte Non Convenzionali – OSMED’ (OSMED30 March 2022) <https://www.osmed.it/2022/03/30/la-crisi-economica-turca-problemi-strutturali-e-scelte-non-convenzionali/> accessed 14 September 2022

Fahim K and Karatas Z, ‘Turkish Court Transfers Khashoggi Murder Case to Saudi Arabia’ Washington Post (7 April 2022) <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/07/khashoggi-turkey-erdogan-mbs/> accessed 14 September 2022

Fahim K and Loveluck L, ‘Erdogan Says Order to Kill Khashoggi “Came from the Highest Levels of the Saudi Government.”’ Washington Post (2 November 2018) <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/netanyahu-condemns-khashoggi-killing-ashorrendous-but-says-iran-is-the-bigger-threat/2018/11/02/fcb19f82-de02-11e8-8bac-bfe01fcdc3a6_story.html> accessed 14 September 2022

Human Rights Watch, ‘The High Cost of Change. Repression under Saudi Crown Prince Tarnishes Reforms’ (2019) <https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/11/04/high-cost-change/repression-under-saudi-crown-prince-tarnishes-reforms> accessed 14 September 2022

——, ‘Turkey’ (2022) <https://www.hrw.org/europe/central-asia/turkey> accessed 14 September 2022

——, ‘Turkey: Don’t Transfer Khashoggi Trial to Saudi Arabia’ (Human Rights Watch6 April 2022) <https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/06/turkey-dont-transfer-khashoggi-trial-saudi-arabia> accessed 14 September 2022

Morris L, Loveluck L and Mekhennen S, ‘Erdogan Says Audio of Khashoggi Killing Has Been given to U.S., Saudis, Europeans’ Washington Post (10 November 2018) <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/tape-of-khashoggis-killing-has-been-given-to-us-saudi-europeans-erdogan-says/2018/11/10/bb21ab5e-e4e0-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html> accessed 14 September 2022

Timur S and Hubbard B, ‘Turkey Transfers Khashoggi Murder Trial to Saudi Arabia’ The New York Times (7 April 2022) <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/07/world/middleeast/khashoggi-murder-trial-turkey-saudi-arabia.html> accessed 14 September 2022

United Nations, Human Rights Council and Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, ‘Investigation Of, Accountability for and Prevention of Intentional State Killings of Human Rights Defenders, Journalists and Prominent Dissidents ’: [2019] digitallibrary.un.org <https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3853356> accessed 14 September 2022

Convenzione di Vienna sulle relazioni consolari 1963

Patto internazionale sui diritti civili e politici 1996

Copyright © 2022 - Mondo Internazionale APS - Tutti i diritti riservati

Share the post

L'Autore

Matteo Gabutti

IT

Matteo Gabutti è uno studente classe 2000 originario della provincia di Torino. Nel capoluogo piemontese ha frequentato il Liceo classico Massimo D'Azeglio, per poi conseguire anche il diploma di scuola superiore statunitense presso la prestigiosa Phillips Academy di Andover (Massachusetts). Dopo aver conseguito la laurea in International Relations and Diplomatic Affairs presso l'Università di Bologna, al momento sta conseguendo il master in International Governance and Diplomacy offerto alla Paris School of International Affairs di SciencesPo. All'interno di Mondo Internazionale ricopre il ruolo di autore per l'area tematica Legge e Società, oltre a contribuire frequentemente alla stesura di articoli per il periodico geopolitico Kosmos.

EN

Matteo Gabutti is a graduate student born in 2000 in the province of Turin. In the Piedmont capital he has attended Liceo Massimo D'Azeglio, a secondary school specializing in classical studies, after which he also graduated from Phillips Academy Andover (MA), one of the most prestigious preparatory schools in the U.S. After his bachelor's in International Relations and Diplomatic Affairs at the University of Bologna, he is currently pursuing a master's in International Governance and Diplomacy at SciencesPo's Paris School of International Affaris. He works with Mondo Internazionale as an author for the thematic area of Law and Society, and he is a frequent contributor for the geopolitical journal Kosmos.

Tag

Khashoggi Turchia Arabia Saudita Erdogan mohammad bin salman omicidio Libertà d'espressione libertàdistampa diritto alla vit uso della forza estradizione processo human rights watch ONU giornalismo Realpolitik Medio Oriente Relazioni Internazionali