More than two months after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, the Trump administration is desperate to sweep the whole episode under the rug. It won’t be easy.
On Wednesday, Michelle Bachelet, the former Chilean president and current U.N. high commissioner for human rights, became the latest voice to call for an international investigation into his killing. “I do believe it is really needed in terms of ensuring what really happened and who are the [people] responsible for that awful killing,” she said at a news conference in Geneva.
The possibility of an outside inquiry into the affair has also been floated by Turkish authorities, who are still pursuing their own investigation. As my colleague Kareem Fahim reported on Wednesday, a Turkish court issued arrest warrants for two officials close to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman: Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri and Saud al-Qahtani. The new Turkish arrest warrants, noted Fahim, appeared to be part of an effort to “pressure Saudi Arabia to reveal more details about Khashoggi’s killing, as well as to isolate the crown prince.”
View the complete December 7 article by Ishaan Tharoor on The Washington Post website here.