Saudi prosecutor seeks death penalty in Khashoggi’s killing

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia’s top prosecutor announces he’s recommended the death penalty for five suspects charged with ordering and carrying out the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.

The announcement by the kingdom’s top prosecutor, Saud al-Mojeb, appears aimed at distancing the killers and their operation from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose powerful position in the kingdom has placed him in the center of a global outcry over the killing. The announcement is published in a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency.

The brutal death of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who had been critical of the crown prince, shocked the world and led many analysts and officials to believe it could not have been carried out without the prince’s knowledge.

Turkey says an assassination squad was sent from Riyadh for the writer and insists the orders for the killing came from the highest levels of the Saudi government, but not King Salman.

After issuing the statement, the spokesman for al-Mojeb’s office, Shalan al-Shalan, tells a rare press conference in Riyadh that Khashoggi’s killers had set in motion plans for the killing on September 29 — three days before his slaying in Istanbul. He says the killers drugged and killed the writer inside the consulate, before dismembering the body and handing it over for disposal by an unidentified local collaborator.

— AP