Turkey Hands Khashoggi Murder Trial to Saudi Arabia

People hold pictures of Jamal Khashoggi at an event marking the second anniversary of his murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, on 2 October 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/TOLGA BOZOGLU.

The decision shocked human rights defenders who said this would end all hope of justice in the case.

Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi agents inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul when he visited the consulate to arrange his marriage papers.

"Let's not entrust the lamb to the wolf," Ali Ceylan, a lawyer for Hatice Cengiz, fiancée of Khashoggi, told reporters before the trial.

Turkey previously took a tougher stance on the Khashoggi case. But the decision has come at a time when Turkey wants to repair relations with Saudi Arabia.

According to some observers, Saudi Arabia's precondition for this improvement in ties was the transfer of the Khashoggi case.

"Handing the case over to Saudi Arabia, a repressive regime lacking even the pretence of a free press or independent judiciary, deals a serious blow to any remaining chance of justice for Khashoggi's killers. It will also send a chilling signal about Turkey's own respect for the freedom of the press," Erol Onderoglu, representative of Reporters Without Borders in Turkey wrote for the Washington Post on March 7.

"Transferring the Khashoggi trial from Turkey to Saudi Arabia would end any possibility of justice for him and would reinforce Saudi authorities' apparent belief that they can get away with murder," said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at global rights organisation Human Rights Watch, HRW.

Turkey was "entrenching Saudi impunity by handing over the Khashoggi case to the very people implicated in his murder," he added.

In 2019, a Saudi court sentenced five men...