Follow us on social

Secretary_pompeo_meets_with_saudi_crowne_prince_salman_al_saud_48119406442

Saudi Verdict on Khashoggi is a Mockery of Justice

Many in the international community at large will refuse to accept Saudi Arabia's secretive court proceedings around the Khashoggi murder as credible.

Analysis | Middle East

On December 23, a Saudi court handed five people death sentences in connection to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi last year. Three others received prison sentences totaling a combined 24 years behind bars. Three other defendants in the trial were acquitted. Although these death and prison sentences constitute the latest Saudi effort to demonstrate some form of accountability for the Washington Post columnist’s grisly killing, Turkey’s government and many in the international community at large will refuse to accept the secretive court proceedings as even slightly credible or legitimate.

While the CIA’s assessment is that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) ordered Khashoggi’s murder, the fact that the trial ignored his purported role in the saga gives many in Turkey and elsewhere reason to reject the court’s latest ruling. In fact, some foreign diplomats were permitted to attend the trial, yet they were required to swear that they would never disclose identities of those found guilty, nor other important details.

In response to the verdict, Yasin Aktay, a figure within Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), slammed the Saudi court’s decision as totally inadequate in terms of delivering justice for Khashoggi. As Aktay put it, “The prosecutor sentenced five hit men to death but did not touch those who were behind the five.” The foreign ministry in Ankara blasted the verdict, concluding that it “falls short of the expectations of Turkey and the international community for the clarification of all aspects of this murder and the serving of justice.” Another high-ranking figure in Ankara condemned the verdict as  “scandalous,” based on the extent to which the nine court sessions were clouded by secrecy. Hatice Cengiz, who was Khashoggi’s fiancée, also denounced the Saudi court’s ruling as “not acceptable.”

One of the verdict’s most controversial aspects is that it exonerated Saud al-Qahtani, who was the royal court's media czar and commonly understood as the man who served as the mastermind behind Khashoggi’s killing. Although the court investigated him, Qahtani was cleared based on “no evidence” backing charges against him. This verdict contradicts U.S. intelligence agencies’ findings that led to the Treasury Department placing sanctions on 17 Saudi officials, including Qahtani, whom the department identified in November 2018 as “part of the planning and execution of the operation.” On similar grounds, deputy intelligence chief Ahmed al-Assiri was also acquitted. Al-Assiri is also widely believed to be guilty of playing a role in Khashoggi’s murder.

Mehmet Celik, managing editor of Turkey’s Daily Sabah newspaper, said: “The fact that several high-profile people have not been charged raises questions around the credibility of the trial and whether or not these people [sentenced to death] were chosen as scapegoats… there has been evidence that phone calls were held between Qahtani and the people who carried out the murder.”

For Saudi Arabia’s government, the verdict’s purpose is to shield MbS and the leadership. Yet observers outside of the Kingdom will see this verdict as laughable. Undoubtedly, this conclusion of the trial will not bring an end to the Khashoggi affair on the international level. Given how many times Riyadh’s official narrative about what happened in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018 has changed, and the extent to which the Saudi investigation and trial lacked transparency, it is a safe bet that this verdict will only further damage MbS’s reputation in the West while putting the Saudi and Turkish governments even further away from being able to move past this killing.

Realistically, notwithstanding the extent to which many in the West and Turkey are outraged at MbS, it does not appear that the Saudi Crown Prince will lose his power as a consequence of his purported role in Khashoggi’s murder. There are no signs that King Salman is on the verge of removing MbS from his position as the Crown Prince. To put it simply, it seems that MbS essentially got away with ordering Khashoggi’s murder.

But a price that the Saudi royal must pay will come in forms that are perhaps not yet fully realized. Unquestionably, MbS now has less reason to trust his own judgment as he contends with the fact that his choices led to this global saga. Furthermore, it is difficult to imagine him ever being able to visit the U.S. in the future. These factors will undermine his interests as he continues to serve as the Crown Prince — and likely as the next King — of Saudi Arabia. If he believes that a few death sentences will do anything to decrease these real problems, MbS is definitely mistaken because the West and Turkey will see this verdict as nothing but a mockery of justice.

Many people outside of Saudi Arabia continue demanding justice for Khashoggi. Yet it is difficult to imagine the world finding out the truth about the murder without an independent, professional, and international investigation that is allowed access to the kingdom. For good reason, no one can expect the Crown Prince to agree to that. Thus, we must accept that we may never get to the bottom of what happened to the Washington Post journalist, whose body has still not been found.

Yet perhaps not everything regarding MbS and the Khashoggi case justifies a gloomy outlook. As one diplomat of a Gulf Cooperation Council member-state has argued, throughout 2019 we may have witnessed a new style of leadership from MbS, exercising greater restraint. Riyadh’s efforts to strike diplomatic settlements in Yemen and Saudi Arabia’s moves to ease tensions with Qatar suggest that MbS is revisiting past policies that put Saudi Arabia in difficult and undesirable positions, particularly with respect to Saudi-U.S. relations. If true, this change would bode well for regional stability.

These steps to moderate Saudi foreign policy may reflect an awareness in Riyadh that a Democrat who resents MbS — in no small part due to the Khashoggi affair — may enter the Oval Office in January 2021. Nonetheless, while it is difficult to prove, one could argue that the fallout of the Khashoggi affair has pushed MbS toward more restrained decision-making that moves away from the aggressive actions that he embraced earlier in his political career.


Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (source: U.S. State Department)
Analysis | Middle East
American Special Operations
Top image credit: (shutterstock/FabrikaSimf)

American cult: Why our special ops need a reset

Military Industrial Complex

This article is the latest installment in our Quincy Institute/Responsible Statecraft project series highlighting the writing and reporting of U.S. military veterans. Click here for more information.

America’s post-9/11 conflicts have left indelible imprints on our society and our military. In some cases, these changes were so gradual that few noticed the change, except as snapshots in time.

keep readingShow less
Recep Tayyip Erdogan Benjamin Netanyahu
Top photo credit: President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Shutterstock/ Mustafa Kirazli) and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Salty View/Shutterstock)
Is Turkey's big break with Israel for real?

Why Israel is now turning its sights on Turkey

Middle East

As the distribution of power shifts in the region, with Iran losing relative power and Israel and Turkey emerging on top, an intensified rivalry between Tel Aviv and Ankara is not a question of if, but how. It is not a question of whether they choose the rivalry, but how they choose to react to it: through confrontation or peaceful management.

As I describe in Treacherous Alliance, a similar situation emerged after the end of the Cold War: The collapse of the Soviet Union dramatically changed the global distribution of power, and the defeat of Saddam's Iraq in the Persian Gulf War reshuffled the regional geopolitical deck. A nascent bipolar regional structure took shape with Iran and Israel emerging as the two main powers with no effective buffer between them (since Iraq had been defeated). The Israelis acted on this first, inverting the strategy that had guided them for the previous decades: The Doctrine of the Periphery. According to this doctrine, Israel would build alliances with the non-Arab states in its periphery (Iran, Turkey, and Ethiopia) to balance the Arab powers in its vicinity (Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, respectively).

keep readingShow less
Havana, Cuba
Top Image Credit: Havana, Cuba, 2019. (CLWphoto/Shutterstock)

Trump lifted sanctions on Syria. Now do Cuba.

North America

President Trump’s new National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) on Cuba, announced on June 30, reaffirms the policy of sanctions and hostility he articulated at the start of his first term in office. In fact, the new NSPM is almost identical to the old one.

The policy’s stated purpose is to “improve human rights, encourage the rule of law, foster free markets and free enterprise, and promote democracy” by restricting financial flows to the Cuban government. It reaffirms Trump’s support for the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, which explicitly requires regime change — that Cuba become a multiparty democracy with a free market economy (among other conditions) before the U.S. embargo will be lifted.

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.