Hanan Elatr, whose husband, journalist Jamal Khashoggi, was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, has been granted political asylum in the US.
The BBC reports that Elatr feared for her safety and came to the US in August 2020 to apply for asylum. The former Emirates flight attendant has maintained that her life would be in danger if she returned to Egypt, from where she came originally, or the United Arab Emirates – her home of more than 25 years.
Khashoggi died in October 2018, and US intelligence has said it believes Saudi Arabia was behind the killing.
Khashoggi first visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 28 September 2018 to obtain a Saudi document stating that he was divorced, so that he could marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz.
But he was told he would have to return to pick up the document, and he arranged to come back on 2 October.
Cengiz accompanied him to the entrance of the consulate on 2 October. He was last seen on CCTV footage entering the building at 13:14 local time.
On 20 October, the Saudi government said a preliminary investigation by prosecutors had concluded that the journalist died during a ‘fight’ after resisting attempts to return him to Saudi Arabia.
On 15 November, Saudi Arabia’s deputy public prosecutor, Shalaan al-Shalaan, said the murder was ordered by the head of a ‘negotiations team’ sent to Istanbul by the Saudi deputy intelligence chief to bring Khashoggi back to the kingdom ‘by means of persuasion’ or, if that failed, ‘by force’.
The BBC quoted Al-Shalaan as saying that investigators concluded that Khashoggi was forcibly restrained after a struggle and injected with a large amount of a drug, resulting in an overdose that led to his death. His body was then dismembered and handed over to a local ‘collaborator’ outside the consulate for disposal.
In January 2019, 11 unnamed individuals were put on trial at the Riyadh Criminal Court in connection with Khashoggi’s murder, and the public prosecutor sought the death penalty for five of them.
In December 2019, the court sentenced five individuals to death for ‘committing and directly participating in the murder of the victim’.
In May 2020, Khashoggi’s son Salah, who had met Saudi Arabia’s king and crown prince weeks after the murder, tweeted: ‘We affirm our confidence in the Saudi judiciary at all levels, that it has been fair to us and that justice has been achieved.’
He and his brothers announced that they were ‘pardoning those who killed our father, seeking reward from God almighty’, accepting the public prosecution’s contention that the murder was not premeditated.
Four months later, the Riyadh Criminal Court commuted the death sentences handed to five of the defendants to 20 years in prison.
[Image: A “Khashoggi Way” street sign put up in front of the White House by activists in February 2019 Jami430, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76643368]