Saudi public prosecutor seeks death penalty in Khashoggi murder case

DUBAI: Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor said on Thursday he was seeking the death penalty for five out of 11 suspects charged in the murder of prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Khashoggi, a critic of Saudi policy, was killed in the country’s Istanbul consulate on October 2 after a struggle by a lethal injection dose and his body was dismembered and taken out of the building, he told reporters in Riyadh.

President Tayyip Erdogan said recordings related to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, which Turkey has shared with Western allies, are ‘appalling’ and shocked a Saudi intelligence officer who listened to them, Turkish media reported on Tuesday.



Khashoggi, a critic of de facto Saudi ruler Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate last month in a hit which Erdogan says was ordered at the “highest levels” of the Saudi government.

Erdogan told reporters on his plane returning from a weekend visit to France that he discussed the Saudi journalist’s killing with the US, French and German leaders at dinner in Paris.

“We played the recordings regarding this murder to everyone who wanted them from us. Our intelligence organisation did not hide anything. We played them to all who wanted them including the Saudis, the USA, France, Canada, Germany, Britain,” he said.



“The recordings are really appalling. Indeed when the Saudi intelligence officer listened to the recordings he was so shocked he said: ‘This one must have taken heroin, only someone who takes who heroin would do this,” he added.

Khashoggi’s killing has provoked global outrage but little concrete action by world powers against Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter and a supporter of Washington’s plans to contain Iranian influence across the Middle East.