Saudi Arabia has issued “final verdicts” against eight suspects in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 — sentencing five of the defendants to 20 years in prison — the state-run Saudi Press Agency (SPA) has reported, citing a public prosecutor spokesman.
Agnes Callamard, the UN Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Killings who lead an independent investigation into the murder, called the verdicts a “parody of justice” on Monday. “The Saudi Prosecutor performed one more act today in this parody of justice. But these verdicts carry no legal or moral legitimacy. They came at the end of a process which was neither fair, nor just, or transparent,” Callamard wrote on Twitter.
