ISTANBUL: Turkish prosecutors on Wednesday charged 20 suspects including two former top officials over the brutal 2018 murder of Riyadh critic Jamal Khashoggi.
Prosecutors accuse Saudi Arabia´s deputy intelligence chief Ahmed al-Assiri and the royal court´s media tsar Saud al-Qahtani of leading the operation against Khashoggi and giving orders to a Saudi hit team.
Khashoggi, 59, a commentator who wrote for The Washington Post, was killed after he entered the Saudi consulate on October 2, 2018, to obtain paperwork for his wedding to Turkish fiancee Hatice Cengiz.
The Saudi insider-turned-critic was strangled and his body cut into pieces by a 15-man Saudi squad inside the consulate, according to Turkish officials. His remains have never been found despite repeated calls by Turkey for the Saudis to cooperate.
Riyadh insists he was killed in a "rogue" operation.
Turkey carried out its own investigation after being unhappy with Saudi Arabia’s explanations.
The Istanbul prosecutor’s office said in a statement that Assiri and Qahtani were charged with "instigating the deliberate and monstrous killing, causing torment”.
The murder caused relations between Ankara and Riyadh — longstanding rivals — to worsen.
Some 3,500 people were killed in immediate aftermath of chemical leak and up to 25,000 are estimated to have died...
President Prabowo Subianto, who was elected in October last, would stay in Pakistan for three days, sources said
After agreement, measures were being taken to reopen routes and ensure peace in area
Marwat emphasizes that very heavy fees were being paid to lawyers about which he had knowledge
Breaching interim order could lead to up to five years in prison, interior ministry said
Under programme, 8,000 agricultural tubewells would be converted to solar energy in Punjab
