'Credible evidence' linking Saudi crown prince to Khashoggi murder: UN expert

UN special rapporteur calls for 'targeted sanctions' against Mohammad bin Salman

GENEVA: There is "credible evidence" linking Saudi Arabia's crown prince to the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi last October, an independent UN rights expert said Wednesday, calling for an international investigation.

In a fresh report, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard said she had "determined that there is credible evidence, warranting further investigation of high-level Saudi officials' individual liability, including the Crown Prince's."

The report stressed that "no conclusion is made as to guilt. The only conclusion made is that there is credible evidence meriting further investigation, by a proper authority, as to whether the threshold of criminal responsibility has been met."

Callamard said for instance that she had found evidence that "Khashoggi was himself fully aware of the powers held by the Crown Prince, and fearful of him."

She suggested Mohammed bin Salman's "personal assets" should be targeted with sanctions until there is proof he was not responsible for the murder.

"In view of the credible evidence into the responsibilities of the Crown Prince for (Khashoggi's) murder, such sanctions ought also to include the Crown Prince and his personal assets abroad, until and unless evidence is provided and corroborated that he carries no responsibilities for this execution," the UN special rapporteur said in her report.

Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor and critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

Riyadh initially said it had no knowledge of his fate, but later blamed the murder on rogue agents.

Saudi Arabia now says Khashoggi murder 'premeditated'

Saudi prosecutors have absolved the crown prince and said around two dozen people implicated in the murder are in custody, with death penalties sought against five men.

Callamard has been conducting what she has described as "an independent human rights inquiry" into Khashoggi's death. UN special rapporteurs are also independent and do not speak for the world body.

In Wednesday's report, she said she found that the probes conducted so far by Saudi Arabia and Turkey had "failed to meet international standards regarding the investigation into unlawful deaths."

She urged UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to launch an official international criminal investigation into the case, which she said would make it possible to "build-up strong files on each of the alleged perpetrators and identify mechanisms for formal accountability, such as an ad hoc or hybrid tribunal."

She also called on the FBI in the United States, where Khashoggi was a resident, to open an investigation into the case, if it has not already done so, "and pursue criminal prosecutions within the United States, as appropriate."

For her investigation, Callamard said that, among other things, she had viewed CCTV footage from inside the consulate of the killing itself.

The report identified by name the 15 people she said were part of the mission to kill Khashoggi, and suggested that many of them were not on the list of 11 unnamed suspects facing a closed-door trial over the murder.

Wednesday's report also found that there was evidence that "Saudi Arabia deliberately used consular immunity to stall Turkey's investigations until the crime scene could be thoroughly cleaned."

"In view of my concerns regarding the fairness of the trial of the 11 suspects in Saudi Arabia, I call for the suspension of the trial," she said in the report.