This decision shows the court aided and abetted Khashoggi's killers

There is apparently a trial under way in Saudi Arabia (SA) concerning the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. We put it that way because no one knows or can follow the course of the trial, its content, the situation of the defendants, the evidence, or even the presiding judge and so on. It is a trial closed to the world, closed to the parties concerned, conducted among themselves.

Already the prosecutor's first opinion, rather than being an indictment, is like the defense brief of a lawyer in a hurry to acquit in advance the real usual suspects. It was obvious that the trial, which began with an indictment that declared from the very first opinion that persons without whose knowledge and orders such an event could in no way have happened, by measure of neither reason nor common sense nor logic, were uninvolved in the incident, would be carried out as a theater to acquit certain people rather than to establish justice. But even as it is, it is a sufficiently interesting theater. A theater with no audience, in which only information about the results is given.

Last December, when it was in fact announced that 5 people had been sentenced to death, we said that with this verdict this court had, so to speak, killed Jamal Khashoggi once more. Because a case had been opened against 31 people in the trial, the investigation had continued concentrated on 11 people, and the verdicts were death for 5 people, 24 years in prison for 3 people and acquittal for 3 people. It had been concluded that the murder was not committed with premeditation and planning but occurred as a result of a sudden altercation, that only the 5 persons in question were directly involved in the incident, and that no one else had any guilt in it whatsoever.

As for Saud al-Qahtani, who had assigned the group, no case was even opened against him because no evidence could be found to incriminate him. Of course, since he could not be incriminated, nothing was found to incriminate the crown prince either, who in an earlier statement had said that "he doesn't even go to the toilet without his knowledge". And of course another scandalous fact about the incident is that there is no information whatsoever about which ones these 5 people sentenced to death are, or who those sentenced to prison are.

Still, the fact that a death sentence had come out in the trial did give, to some small extent, the impression that a degree of care was being shown to the incident, but then what should we see and hear? Jamal Khashoggi's son Salah announced in a Twitter message, citing a verse in the Qur'an and on the grounds that forgiving is better, that "they forgave his father's killers".

The Sharia says so, they say. MBS, who in recent times has entered a race to erase everything done in the name of the Sharia, suddenly remembered the Sharia and found a way out for himself in it. It is a fact to be noted in passing that this is a complete slander against the Sharia. In cases of retribution, forgiveness by the family is possible in the Sharia, but for God's sake, was this murder committed by mistake, or unintentionally during a mutual fight, that the Sharia ruling in question should be applied to it?

Does even the family have the authority in the Sharia to forgive a savage murder committed against an innocent person, entirely planned and with the participation of a large number of people? No. This murder is a case of a crime against humanity and goes beyond the assessment of Jamal Khashoggi's relatives.

However, as far as we can see, this message of Salah Khashoggi convinced the court, and the death sentences, which had been limited to 5 out of the 31 people involved in the incident, however they were selected, were reduced to 20 years.

This trial, conducted in a process with no transparency whatsoever about the court, also reflects the haste to spirit away the defendants from the trial that Turkey is, quite naturally and impartially, conducting.

The SA court has not tried Khashoggi's killers; it has taken them under protection and care. By entering into solidarity with them in order to spirit them away from justice, it has committed the crime of aiding and abetting them.

Of course there is also the question of under what conditions Salah Khashoggi posted this Twitter message. Did he really post this message of his own free will? There is a network that threatens with their sons, in order to bring Khashoggi to SA or, if it cannot bring him, to silence him. What do we have that would make us think this network went silent or stopped its activity after the Khashoggi murder? There is no one who does not know that the relatives of a large number of people currently held in SA arbitrarily and solely because of their opinions are themselves subject to surveillance and threats. The information, reported in the press only a few weeks ago, that an assassination squad was sent to kill former Saudi intelligence officer Saad al-Jabri, just 12 days after the Khashoggi murder, in Canada where he was, by the same methods, is still fresh. It was understood that al-Jabri too, just like Khashoggi, was being persuaded to return to SA, and that for this purpose his children had been arrested and there was no information whatsoever on their condition.

I am sure no one is curious under what conditions an administrative apparatus for which such practices are extremely customary obtained such a statement from Salah or the relatives of Khashoggi in its hands.

Frankly, it is certain that a fair verdict will not come out of a court under the control of the usual suspect that dominates all the institutions of the country in an aggressive posture. If justice is wanted, everyone needs to trust Turkish justice, which has no partiality in this matter, grants the defendants every right of defense, conducts the trial process in the most transparent manner, and, since it is the place where the incident took place, has jurisdiction.

Indeed, the trial in Turkey is already continuing, and the next session of the court, whose first session was held last June, is on 24 November. Even if the SA judiciary has not contributed in the slightest to the establishment of justice with the verdict it gave, it has with this verdict provided a new piece of data about the dimensions of the case.

I am sure this data too will be assessed by the Turkish courts in the most appropriate manner.