U.N. investigator details, slams Saudi Arabia for 'premeditated execution' of Jamal Khashoggi

In a long-awaited 101-page report released Wednesday morning, an independent United Nations human rights investigator said Saudi Arabia is legally responsible for the "deliberate, premeditated execution" of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khasoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last October. The investigator, Agnes Callamard, said her investigation, hampered by a lack of cooperation and likely obstruction by the Saudi government, found no "smoking gun" linking Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the "extrajudicial killing," but she found enough "credible evidence" to warrant "further investigation by a proper authority" outside Saudi Arabia.

"Evidence points to the 15-person mission to execute Mr. Khashoggi requiring significant government coordination, resources, and finances," Callamard wrote. "While the Saudi government claims that these resources were put in place by [then–deputy head of intelligence] Ahmed Asiri, every expert consulted finds it inconceivable that an operation of this scale could be implemented without the crown prince being aware, at a minimum, that some sort of mission of a criminal nature, directed at Mr. Khashoggi, was being launched."

The CIA has concluded that Salman likely ordered Khashoggi's murder, but President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have said the U.S. is still determining responsibility, also arguing that one bad incident isn't sufficient to derail the U.S.-Saudi relationship.

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Callamard also gave a detailed, minute-by-minute breakdown of Khashoggi's murder, from two Saudi agents discussing dismembering him before he entered the consulate to get marriage papers to the Saudi ruse that he was being taken to back Saudi Arabia, an aborted text message to his son, his sedation and suffocation with a plastic bag, and his dismemberment with a buzzsaw. His body has never been recovered.