UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A U.N. independent investigator says she regrets that neither Saudi Arabia nor the U.N. secretary-general and U.N. decision-making bodies have taken steps to criminally investigate “the chain of command” behind the Saudi operation that led to last year’s execution of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Agnes Callamard says her findings presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council in June showed that the Saudi columnist was the victim of “a planned, organized, well-resourced and premeditated extrajudicial killing for which the state of Saudi Arabia must bear responsibility.”
But she said at a news conference Friday that “it’s really the chain of command that we need to unpack” — who ordered, incited or turned a blind eye to the Oct. 2, 2018, killing and dismemberment of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.