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Friends of Jamal Khashoggi mark one year anniversary of his murder

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It’s been a year since journalist Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, where he was murdered.

The extrajudicial killing stunned the world, creating an outcry from the international community.

The implication of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman also damaged the country’s reputation overseas.

But even one year after the Washington Post columnist disappeared, many questions surrounding the details of his death remain unanswered.

“Why was Jamal killed and why has the public not been informed about the death until now….we don’t know where the body is. His funeral prayers have not been performed. There has been no burial,” Khashoggi’s fiancée Hatice Cengiz said in an interview with the Associated Press on October 1.

She was reacting to an interview with the Saudi prince that aired on CBS News on Sunday in which the Saudi prince denied his involvement in the extrajudicial killing but said he took responsibility for it as it was committed by people working for the Saudi government.

Image result for Jamal Khashoggi

Jamal Khashoggi was last seen walking into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, where he was set to obtain documents to pave the way for him to marry his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz.

The journalist had been living in self-imposed exile since September 2017 in the United States ahead of his murder after sharing critical views of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in his columns.

Intelligence officers in Turkey and other countries assessed recordings of Khashoggi’s struggle with officials inside the consulate concluding that he could have been suffocated, according to a UN report on the murder by Agnes Callamard, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

Callamard is also set to attend the ceremony in Turkey. She reacted to the Crown Prince’s comments on Sunday on Twitter, stating that he had taken great pains to distance himself from the murder.

“Yet the Saudi government has consistently rejected my finding that the murder of Mr Khashoggi was an extrajudicial execution for which the State is responsible… a “responsible” Statesman should not have tolerated 12 months of disinformation and 12 months continuing policies of intolerance and repression that led to Mr Khashoggi murder,” Callamard wrote on Twitter.

She has called for the UN to establish a “standing instrument to investigate targeted killings.”

Khashoggi’s last column talked about freedom in the Arab world, remarking that Freedom House only classifies one Arab country as free.

“A state-run narrative dominates the public psyche, and while many do not believe it, a large majority of the population falls victim to this false narrative. Sadly, this situation is unlikely to change,” he said.

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