Khashoggi murder 5 years later: Has the

world moved on?

Turkish writer Hatice Cengiz (R), fiancée of Saudi journalist and

dissident Jamal Khashoggi, poses next to a portrait of Khashoggi
after unveiling it on the National Mall in Washington, DC., on
October 1, 2021, during a memorial ceremony marking the third
anniversary of his murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Photo:
AFP
Saudi human rights activists working to get justice for Saudi
dissident Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered five years ago on
October 2 , want to see the international community take a less
transactional approach to their country.

"We know we live in the real world and that governments must deal
with Saudi Arabia," said Abdullah Alaoudh, Saudi director at the
US-based Freedom Initiative. "But ignoring human rights, ignoring
basic democratic values, when dealing with dictatorships and
autocratic regimes doesn't serve a country's own strategic interests
or bring about human rights," he argued.

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"When you trade your freedoms for security, you get neither,"
Alaoudh told DW.

"When dealing with Saudi Arabia, we believe there is a way to

navigate current politics without being naive," added Lina al-
Hathloul, head of advocacy at the UK-based organization, ALQST
for Human Rights ("al-qist" means "justice" in Arabic). "You can
buy Saudi oil and criticize the gross human rights abuses of Saudi
Arabia at the same time," she stressed. "Saudi Arabia has leverage,
but the world — the EU, UK and US, in particular — also has
leverage over Saudi Arabia, and they should be using it," she told
DW.

Al-Hathloul has been campaigning for justice for her sister, Loujain,
a women's rights activist, for years. The latter fought to end a
prohibition on female drivers in Saudi Arabia but was imprisoned
for almost three years for it. Loujain is currently out of prison but is
banned from leaving Saudi Arabia. And Alaoudh's father, Salman,
an Islamic scholar, is still a political prisoner back in Saudi Arabia.
He was arrested in 2017 after advocating for peaceful coexistence
between Qatar and other Gulf states in a tweet.

However, this week, both human rights activists were talking to DW

about the Khashoggi case. It remains one of the most high-profile
cases of Saudi abuse, but world attention seems to have shifted
away over the past few years.

Over the last month, international media attention on Saudi Arabia

has been firmly focused on things like potential normalization with
Israel, a rumored defense pact with the United States, how the
Saudis might link their power grid to Greece's and excitement that
US electric automaker Lucid was setting up its first plant inside
Saudi Arabia.

Five years ago, headlines featuring Saudi Arabia were very

different.

"CIA concludes Saudi crown prince ordered Jamal Khashoggi's

assassination," the Washington Post said.
"Killing Khashoggi: how a brutal Saudi hit job unfolded," a New
York Times visual investigation pronounced.

"Jamal Khashoggi: Murder in the consulate," the Guardian wrote.

A woman holds up a sign during a Paris demonstration denouncing

the murder

How did Khashoggi die?

On October 2, 2018, Khashoggi went to a pre-arranged appointment
at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. He was picking up a paper
certifying his divorce so he could marry Turkish academic Hatice
Cengiz.

Hatice Cengiz, the fiancee of murdered Saudi critic Jamal

Khashoggi, answers journalists' questions outside the courthouse,
after the courts confirmed a halt of the trial in absentia of 26
suspects linked to the killing Khashoggi and its transfer to Saudi, in
Istanbul on April 7, 2022. Photo: AFP
Previously, Khashoggi had been a prominent figure in Saudi Arabia,
with his family having long been close to the Saudi royals. But after
the man who is now the country's de facto leader, Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman, began to rise to power, he fell out of favor.

Khashoggi emigrated to the US in 2017, where he began to publish

more outspoken, anti-government editorials in the Washington Post.
In 2018, he met Cengiz and proposed marriage. This is why, on
October 2, Cengiz says she waited outside the Saudi consulate for
him for 10 hours. He never came out.
In the ensuing months, in an attention-getting row of accusations,
denials and counter-claims, it emerged that Khashoggi had been
killed inside the Saudi consulate. His corpse had been dismembered,
and his body was never found.

As gruesome details emerged, Saudi Arabia called it a "rogue"

operation carried out by its operatives but without the knowledge of
the government. Bin Salman denied any personal involvement.

In December 2018, after a closed trial, Saudi Arabia sentenced five

people to death for Khashoggi's murder and imprisoned three more
for between seven and 10 years. The death sentences were later
commuted to 20 years in prison, and Saudi authorities proclaimed
the case closed.

'High unlikely' murder happened without prince's

authorization
Others disagreed with the Saudi version of events, including US and
Turkish intelligence agencies and the UN's special rapporteur on
extrajudicial killings.

"We assess that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin

Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, to capture or kill
Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi," the US Director of National
Intelligence said in a 2021 statement.

It is "highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an

operation of this nature without the Crown Prince's authorization."

The closed-door trial in Saudi Arabia was widely disparaged. But

there have been other attempts to exact some justice for Khashoggi.
In 2020, Turkey put 26 Saudi nationals on trial in absentia — the
Saudis refused to hand them over to Istanbul — but early in 2022,
the case was halted. Turkish authorities said it was impossible to
prosecute the case because the defendants were not there in person.
However, human rights organizations claimed the decision was
political, a result of Turkey and Saudi Arabia reconciling after the
murder.

Cengiz and the US-based organization Khashoggi helped found,

Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, also launched a
civil case in the US. However, this case was dismissed at the end of
2022, when the US government ruled that bin Salman had immunity
from prosecution because he was a head of state. The prince was
appointed Saudi prime minister in September 2022.

Despite his engagement to Cengiz, it emerged that Khashoggi had

already married another woman, an Egyptian named Hanan Elatr,
earlier in 2018. In June this year, Elatr launched a civil suit against
Israeli spyware firm, the NSO Group, which allegedly helped install
the notorious Pegasus spyware on her mobile phone. This helped
Saudi authorities track Khashoggi, she said. The NSO Group denies
targeting Elatr.

Back in Saudi Arabia, Khashoggi's four adult children have received

property worth millions in compensation for the murder of their
father. Saudi official

say this is typical of local tribal law in the country, which demands
compensation, often financial, from perpetrator to victim.

Yet, despite some ongoing legal action around the Khashoggi case,
it's very clear the world has moved on.
In 2020, US President Joe Biden threatened to turn Saudi Arabia
into a "global pariah" over the high-profile murder. Just over a week
ago, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken released a statement on
the occasion of Saudi Arabia's national day, expressing how the US
"greatly values the enduring relationship we have had with Saudi
Arabia over the past eight decades."

Analysts argue that Western leaders and others have been studiously
ignoring the latest human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia and placing
their domestic interests first. In particular, Saudi oil is essential, as is
the country's financial clout and deliberate attempts to become an
important diplomatic player.

So how do Saudi activists like Alaoudh and al-Hathloul keep

protesting, even as the world moves on?

Dictators don't bring stability

"We keep fighting anyway," al-Hathloul said. "As a Saudi, I believe
that fighting for Jamal will, in the long term, bring justice to him,
his family and his legacy. And in the short term, we're making sure
we remind people that this could happen again," she argued,
pointing to recent draconian sentences given to Saudi citizens
simply for expressing an opinion on social media.

Based in Washington, Alaoudh is trying to convince US officials

working on foreign policy to reevaluate what he describes as the
false dichotomy between political reality and human rights and
toppling the idea that dictators bring stability.

"Because you're not just losing the people of Saudi Arabia with that
kind of thinking," he argued. "You're losing everybody. Because
you send the wrong signal to the world and to every dictator that as
long as you're sitting on top of an oil well, you can literally get away
with murder."