ISTANBUL — A court docket in Turkey transferred the trial within the homicide of the Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia on Thursday, a transfer nearly sure to finish the final case that held out hope of serving some measure of justice for a heinous crime that drew international outrage.
The Turkish resolution was a blow to human rights advocates who had hoped the trial in Turkey would at the very least make public extra proof of who was concerned and the way Mr. Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by a Saudi hit squad in 2018 contained in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, the place he had gone to get paperwork he wanted to marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz.
“Let’s not entrust the lamb to the wolf,” Ali Ceylan, a lawyer for Ms. Cengiz, advised the court docket on Thursday earlier than the choice was introduced. “Let’s defend the dignity and honor of the Turkish nation, and let’s not make such a call.”
Mr. Ceylan reminded the court docket that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and different Turkish officers had stated that justice didn’t exist in Saudi Arabia.
Gokmen Baspinar, one other lawyer for Ms. Cengiz, advised the court docket that Saudi Arabia’s trial of suspects within the case was already over and that most of the defendants within the Turkish trial had been acquitted there.
“It will be irresponsible for the Turkish nation to switch the case to a rustic with no justice,” Mr. Baspinar stated.
The choice coincided with efforts by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to enhance his nation’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. Final week, the Turkish overseas minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, stated in a televised interview that “concrete steps” had been on the way in which to fix ties with the Arab world’s richest state.
The chief of a panel of judges introduced the choice within the courtroom, granting a request final week by the prosecutor to switch the case as a result of not one of the 26 Saudi suspects on trial had been in Turkish custody. Turkey’s justice minister endorsed the prosecutor’s request.
The Turkish trial, which opened in 2020, was largely symbolic as a result of Saudi Arabia had refused to extradite the suspects and Turkish regulation doesn’t permit convictions of people that haven’t testified.
Mr. Khashoggi was a distinguished journalist who fell out together with his authorities and moved to the USA, the place he wrote columns for The Washington Submit that had been essential of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his plans to remake the dominion. Mr. Khashoggi’s physique has by no means been discovered.
Prince Mohammed has insisted he knew nothing of the homicide plot prematurely. Nevertheless, the C.I.A. concluded that he had greenlighted the operation to kill or seize Mr. Khashoggi.
Turkish authorities dribbled out particulars to maintain the case within the highlight, which, together with the homicide, exacerbated longstanding tensions between Turkey and Saudi Arabia over Turkey’s relationship with political Islamists within the Arab world and its help for the antigovernment uprisings of the Arab Spring, which Saudi Arabia largely opposed.
Saudi Arabia had imposed an unofficial boycott of Turkish items, drastically lowering the move of Turkish exports to Saudi Arabia, and Turkey has extra lately suffered a big monetary disaster that has prompted the worth of its foreign money to plummet.
In 2019, Saudi Arabia sentenced 5 males to loss of life and three to jail phrases over Mr. Khashoggi’s killing. The following 12 months, the loss of life sentences had been modified to jail phrases after considered one of Mr. Khashoggi’s grownup sons pardoned the killers.
That trial strengthened the Saudi narrative that Mr. Khashoggi’s loss of life was the results of a rogue operation with out the oversight of high officers. The Saudis have by no means named the lads who had been sentenced, and a United Nations skilled dismissed the trial as “the antithesis of justice.”
In endorsing the case’s switch to Saudi Arabia final week, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag stated in an announcement that the trial would proceed in Saudi Arabia and that Turkey would wait to see convictions and sentences earlier than dropping its personal case.
Nevertheless it appeared unlikely that Saudi Arabia would hear the case as a result of Saudi officers have stated they contemplate their trial the ultimate phrase on the matter.
Safak Timur reported from Istanbul, and Ben Hubbard from Beirut, Lebanon.
