RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- A court in Saudi Arabia sentenced five people to death Monday for the killing of Washington Post columnist and royal family critic Jamal Khashoggi.
Three other people were found guilty by Riyadh's criminal court of covering up the crime and were sentenced to a combined 24 years in prison, according to the statement read by the Saudi Arabia attorney general's office on state TV.
However, the two most senior officials implicated in the case, including an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, were cleared of wrongdoing, according to the statement.
In all, 11 people were put on trial in Saudi Arabia over the slaying in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, a killing that drew international condemnation and cast a cloud of suspicion over the crown prince. Khashoggi had been one of Mohammed's most prominent critics.
A small number of diplomats, including from Turkey, as well as members of Khashoggi's family were allowed to attend the nine court sessions, though independent media were barred.
Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen who was a resident of the U.S., had walked into the Saudi Consulate in Turkey on Oct. 2, 2018, for an appointment to pick up documents that would allow him to remarry. He never walked out, and his body has not been found.
A team of 15 Saudi agents had flown to Turkey to meet Khashoggi inside the consulate. They included a forensic doctor, intelligence and security officers, and individuals who worked for the crown prince's office, according to Agnes Callamard, who investigated the case for the United Nations. Turkish officials say Khashoggi was killed and then dismembered with a bone saw.
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The trial, however, concluded that the killing was not premeditated, according to Shaalan al-Shaalan, the spokesman from the attorney general's office. That finding is in line with the Saudi government's official explanation: The agents had been instructed to return Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia alive, but were overzealous and went "rogue."
"There was no prior intention to kill at the start of this mission," Shaalan said, adding that the killing was a "snap decision."
The names of those found guilty were not disclosed by the government. Executions in the kingdom are carried out by beheading, sometimes in public. All the verdicts can be appealed.
However, Shaalan on Monday named the two senior aides who were exonerated. Saud al-Qahtani is a media adviser to the crown prince and one of the kingdom's most strident defenders, and Shaalan said he was "investigated by the public prosecutor and was not charged because of lack of evidence against him."
Ahmed al-Asiri, also a former adviser to the crown prince who was deputy head of intelligence, was tried and released because of insufficient evidence, the attorney general's office said.
The court also ordered the release of Mohammed al-Otaibi, Saudi Arabia's consul-general in Istanbul at the time of the killing. He is among those sanctioned by the U.S. over his "involvement in gross violations of human rights." The U.S. State Department has also issued travel bans against his immediate family.
REACTION SWIFT
Callamard condemned the trial as a "mockery of justice," saying, "The fact that that the chain of command and the state have not been investigated means that the system that made it possible for Jamal Khashoggi to be killed has not been touched."
Amnesty International pronounced the outcome a "whitewash."
"The decision is too unlawful to be acceptable," Khashoggi's Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, said in a text message to The Associated Press. "It is unacceptable."
However, one of Khashoggi's sons, Salah, who lives in Saudi Arabia, tweeted after the verdicts that the Saudi judicial system "was fair to us and achieved justice."
In Turkey, Yasin Aktay, a member of Turkey's ruling party and a friend of Khashoggi's, criticized the verdict, saying the Saudi court had failed to bring the real perpetrators to justice.
"The prosecutor sentenced five hit men to death but did not touch those who were behind the five," Aktay said.
Post publisher Fred Ryan criticized the findings.
"The complete lack of transparency and the Saudi government's refusal to cooperate with independent investigators suggests that this was merely a sham trial," he said in a statement. "Those ultimately responsible, at the highest level of the Saudi government, continue to escape responsibility for the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi."
GRUESOME AUDIO
Turkey, a rival of Saudi Arabia, apparently had the Saudi Consulate bugged. It has shared audio of the killing with the CIA, among others.
The CIA concluded last year that the crown prince had ordered Khashoggi's assassination. Congress has said it believes the crown prince is "responsible for the murder."
President Donald Trump has condemned the killing but has stood by the 34-year-old crown prince and defended U.S.-Saudi ties.
The 101-page report released this year by Callamard, the U.N. special rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, included details from the audio Turkish authorities shared with her. She reported hearing Saudi agents waiting for Khashoggi to arrive and one of them asking how they would carry out the body.
Not to worry, the doctor said. "Joints will be separated. It is not a problem," he said in the audio. "If we take plastic bags and cut it into pieces, it will be finished. We will wrap each of them."
The slaying stunned Saudi Arabia's Western allies and immediately raised questions about how the high-level operation could have been carried out without the knowledge of the crown prince.
Saudi Arabia added to the questions in the days after Khashoggi's disappearance by offering shifting accounts about what happened.
After his fiancee waited three hours for him to exit the consulate on Oct. 2, 2018, she was told that Khashoggi had already left through the back door. Four days after Khashoggi's disappearance, an official at the consulate told Reuters that "the consulate and the embassy are working to search for him."
Surveillance video released days later showed the 15-person team arriving at the consulate. Saudi officials described them as tourists. A report from Saudi broadcaster Al Arabiya on Oct. 11 asked, "Who are the 15 Saudi tourists falsely accused of killing Khashoggi?"
By Oct. 15, The New York Times was reporting that the Saudis would blame one intelligence official for "an interrogation that went wrong."
On Oct. 21, the kingdom eventually settled on the explanation that Khashoggi was killed by rogue officials in a brawl. One Saudi said the team at the consulate tried to intimidate Khashoggi, but the 59-year-old raised his voice and the team panicked.
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In an interview in September with CBS' 60 Minutes, Crown Prince Mohammed said: "I take full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia." But he reiterated that he had no knowledge of the operation, saying he could not keep such close track of the country's millions of employees.
The prince's father, King Salman, ordered a shake-up of top security posts after the killing.
Khashoggi had spent the last year of his life in exile in the U.S. writing in the Post about human-rights violations in Saudi Arabia. Numerous critics of the Saudi crown prince are in prison and face trial on national security charges.
The Post columns criticizing Saudi Arabia's crackdown on dissent countered positive reports in the West about Mohammed's societal changes. The crown prince is hugely popular at home, especially among young Saudis happy with the changes, which include the opening of movie theaters and permission for women to drive. Some American executives who had stayed away because of the backlash over the slaying have resumed doing business with the kingdom.
Information for this article was contributed by Abdullah Al-Shihri, Aya Batrawy and Suzan Fraser of The Associated Press; and by Kareem Fahim and Sarah Dadouch of The Washington Post.
A Section on 12/24/2019