‘Nothing has been done’: Khashoggi’s fiancée urges action against Saudi Arabia

Hatice Cengiz, the fiancée of slain columnist Jamal Khashoggi, implored lawmakers in wrenching testimony Thursday to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for his death.

Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident who lived in Virginia and wrote for The Washington Post, disappeared in October after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents needed for his impending marriage to Cengiz. Turkish intelligence later concluded that Saudi agents quickly strangled Khashoggi and dismembered his body with a bone saw.

“In the early days, President Trump said it would be solved. Ms. Pelosi said how unacceptable it was,” Cengiz, 37, an Istanbul-based graduate student, said through a translator. “Seven or eight months later, we see that nothing has been done.”

Cengiz’s testimony before a subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee was part of a broader hearing to explore the dangers of reporting on human rights. It underscored the continuing outrage of lawmakers, not only at the killing but also at the White House’s unflagging support of Saudi Arabia and its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Speaking sometimes breathlessly and with tightly clasped hands, she testified that she had nightmares every night “thinking of Jamal’s suffering,” and she chronicled how their dream of building a life together was cut short: “This was my destiny, to stand beside him in his life and his work, and for him to stand behind me in mine.”

“If Jamal’s murder passes with impunity, then me speaking here today puts me in danger,” Cengiz said. “It places everyone who shares these universal values in danger.”

Khashoggi’s killing unleashed a bipartisan furore on Capitol Hill, with lawmakers calling for action.

“I fully realize we have to deal with bad actors and imperfect situations on the international stage,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, a longtime proponent of the United States’ alliance with the kingdom. “However, when we lose our moral voice, we lose our strongest asset.”

But the White House remained cool to the killing. While the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on 17 Saudis accused of being involved, President Donald Trump issued an equivocal statement about Khashoggi’s death, ignoring the CIA’s conclusion that the crown prince was directly responsible. “We may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of  Jamal Khashoggi,” Trump said in an extraordinary official statement in November. “In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

Lawmakers were further enraged when the White House defied a legal deadline to provide Congress with a report determining whether the crown prince was personally responsible for Khashoggi’s death.

In a rare invocation of the War Powers Act, Congress passed a bipartisan resolution that would have forced an end to US military involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, sending Trump a pointed rebuke over his continued defence of the kingdom. But the president vetoed the resolution in April, and supporters could not muster the votes to override it.

This year, Sen Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen Todd Young, R-Ind, introduced legislation that would impose sanctions on those responsible for Khashoggi’s death and prohibit some arms sales to Saudi Arabia. That legislation has yet to be taken up by the committee’s chairman, Sen Jim Risch, R-Idaho, a Trump loyalist.

At Thursday’s hearing, however, lawmakers again vowed to hold the kingdom accountable.

“There is a time now to draw a bright line in the sand,” said Rep Christopher H Smith, R-NJ, upbraiding the kingdom’s “arrogance” as Cengiz nodded in agreement.

Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said Thursday that until those responsible for Khashoggi’s death are brought to justice, “journalists around the world, particularly those covering human rights, will continue to work in an environment of uncertainty and vulnerability.”

But he cautioned that Khashoggi’s death was part of a larger trend of threats facing reporters around the world, with at least 54 journalists killed last year — an 88% jump from 2017.

“Murder,” Simon said, “is the ultimate form of censorship.”

c.2019 New York Times News Service