...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire...
has charged 20 suspects including two former aides to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
...Crown Prince and modernizer of Soddy Arabia...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
as of 2016. The Turks hate him, so he must be all right, despite the occasional brutal murder of Qatar-owned journalists...
over the 2018 murder of Riyadh critic beloved martyr of journalism Jamal Khashoggi
......who was simultaneously a very well paid Washington Post columnist and a long time propagandist for the Moslem Brotherhood and Al Qaeda — he died while on the Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
i payroll, but previously wrote at the behest of then-Saudi intel chief Prince Turki al-Faisal......
, prosecutors said on Wednesday.
Prosecutors accuse Saudi Arabia’s deputy intelligence chief Ahmed al-Assiri and the royal court’s media czar Saud al-Qahtani of leading the operation and giving orders to a Saudi hit team.
Khashoggi, 59, a commentator who wrote for The Washington Post, was killed after he entered the Saudi consulate on October 2, 2018, to obtain paperwork for his wedding to
Turkey carried out its own investigation into the murder after being unhappy with Saudi explanations.
The Istanbul prosecutor’s office said in a statement that Assiri and Qahtani were charged with "instigating the deliberate and monstrous killing, causing torment".
Eighteen other suspects ‐ including intelligence operative Maher Mutreb who frequently travelled with the crown prince on foreign tours, forensic expert Salah al-Tubaigy and Fahad al-Balawi, a member of the Saudi royal guard ‐ were also charged with "deliberately and monstrously killing, causing torment".
They face life in jail if convicted.
Mutreb, Tubaigy and Balawi had been among 11 on trial in Riyadh, during which sources said many of those accused defended themselves by saying they were carrying out Assiri’s orders, describing him as the operation’s "ringleader".
The
The prosecutor had already issued arrest warrants for the suspects, who are not in Turkey.
Khashoggi, a Saudi insider-turned-critic, was strangled and his body cut into pieces by a 15-man Saudi squad inside the consulate, according to
His remains have never been found.
The CIA, UN special envoy Agnes Callamard and Turkey have directly linked Crown Prince Mohammed to the killing, a charge the kingdom vehemently denies.