The fiancée of slain Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi has filed a federal lawsuit in the hopes of holding Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman accountable for her loved one’s brutal murder.
The suit, filed Tuesday in Washington, D.C. on behalf of Hatice Cengiz, accuses the Saudi kingdom’s de facto leader of personally ordering the execution to silence Khashoggi, a high-profile government critic.
“Jamal believed anything was possible in America and I place my trust in the American civil justice system to obtain a measure of justice and accountability,” Cengiz said in a statement.
The newspaper columnist was killed and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. Khashoggi was there for what he thought was an appointment to pick up documents needed to wed his Turkish fiancée.
His body has still not been found.
The lawsuit accuses Prince Mohammad and a host of Saudi Ministry of Interior officials of a “brutal and brazen crime” that was the result of “weeks of planning.”
The defendants “saw Mr. Khashoggi’s actions in the United States as an existential threat” to their political interests and lured him to the consulate where a hit squad laid in wait, the lawsuit alleges.
“Defendants resolved to put an end to Mr. Khashoggi’s efforts by any means necessary,” the suit states.
Saudi officials initially claimed that Khashoggi had left the building unharmed.
However, amid mounting international pressure, they settled on the explanation that a team inside the consulate had been tasked with persuading Khashoggi to return to the kingdom — and that the meeting unexpectedly turned violent, resulting in the writer’s accidental death.
Last month, a Saudi court sentenced eight nationals to lengthy prison for their roles in the slaying.
The Saudi court ruled that the killing was not premeditated — though the CIA has previously concluded that the prince personally ordered Khashoggi’s murder.
With Post wires