Saudi Arabia’s top prosecutor is recommending the death penalty for five suspects charged with ordering and carrying out the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi.
Saudi Al-Mojeb told journalists in a rare press conference in Riyadh on Thursday that Khashoggi’s killers had set in motion plans for the killing on September 29, three days before he was killed inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.
The prosecutor says the highest-level official behind the killing is Saudi former deputy intelligence chief Ahmadal-Assiri, who has been fired for ordering Khashoggi’s forced return.
The prosecutor says 21 people are now in custody, with 11 indicted and referred to trial.
Khashoggi died after being drugged by the five accused and then dismembered, a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office said in the first Saudi acknowledgment of the manner of his killing.
The journalist’s body parts were then handed over to an agent outside the consulate grounds, the spokesman said.
Khashoggi, 59, a Washington Post columnist and critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
But the prosecutor said the Saudi crown prince is not implicated in Khashoggi’s murder.
Source: The Associated Press