Family of slain Saudi journalist sues Saudi Crown Prince
Washington: The family of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has filed a federal lawsuit accusing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of personally ordering Khashoggi's brutal execution in order to silence the high-profile government critic.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Khashoggi's fiancee Hatice Cengiz and Democracy for the Arab World Now or DAWN, the human rights organization that Khashoggi founded shortly before his death.
It names Prince Mohammed and a host of Saudi Ministry of Interior officials, accusing them of a brutal and brazen crime that was the result of weeks of planning" and premeditation.
Jamal believed anything was possible in America and I place my trust in the American civil justice system to obtain a measure of justice and accountability," Cengiz said in a statement Tuesday.
Khashoggi disappeared on Oct. 2, 2018 after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, seeking documents that would allow him to marry Cengiz, a Turkish national who was waiting outside the building. He never emerged.
Turkish officials allege Khashoggi was killed and then dismembered with a bone saw inside the consulate. His body has not been found. Turkey apparently had the consulate bugged and shared audio of the killing with the C.I.A., among others.
Western intelligence agencies, as well as the U.S. Congress, have said the crown prince bears ultimate responsibility for the killing and that an operation of this magnitude could not have happened without his knowledge.
A prominent government critic, Khashoggi had founded DAWN in order to push for democratic and human rights reform in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Arab world. Tuesday's suit alleges that the defendants saw Mr. Khashoggi's actions in the United States as an existential threat to their political interests and sought to lure him inside the consulate where a specially dispatched hit squad awaited.
Defendants resolved to put an end to Mr. Khashoggi's efforts by any means necessary, the suit states.
Saudi officials initially offering conflicting accounts, including claiming that Khashoggi had left the building unharmed. But amid mounting international pressure, they settled on the explanation that Khashoggi's death was a tragic accident, saying that the team was under orders to merely persuade him to return to the kingdom. The official account is that the meeting unexpectedly turned violent, resulting in Khashoggi's accidental death.
In September, a Saudi court issued a final verdict sentencing five mid-level officials and operatives to 20-year jail sentences. The court had originally ordered the death penalty, but reduced the punishment after Khashoggi's son Salah, who lives in Saudi Arabia and has received financial compensation from the royal court for his father's killing, announced that he forgave the defendants.
Three others were sentenced to lesser jail terms. The Saudi court did not implicate Prince Mohammed or other senior Interior Ministry officials.
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Pakistan reports two more polio cases; Total tally now 52
ISLAMABAD: At least two more cases of poliovirus were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of infections to 52 so far this year, a report said on Friday.
“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of two more wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan," an official statement said.
The fresh infections — a boy and a girl — were reported from the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Genetic sequencing of the samples collected from the children is underway," the statement read. Dera Ismail Khan, one of the seven polio-endemic districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has reported five polio cases so far this year.
Of the 52 cases in the country this year, 24 are from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.
There is no cure for polio. Only multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five can keep them protected.
