Nilay Kar Onum
October 22, 2019•Update: October 22, 2019
ISTANBUL
The fiance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last year, demanded to know the whereabouts of his body.
TRT World Forum, an annual international meeting hosted by Turkey's public broadcaster TRT, hosted Tuesday in Istanbul a special session on the slain Saudi journalist and the effects his murder had on changing the geopolitical balance in the Middle East.
Speaking at a session titled: Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi: A Reflection of Regional Politics, Hatice Cengiz described the murder as a “black spot on Saudi Arabia's history that no-one is able to wipe clean".
"Why was he killed? Why did they brutally kill Jamal?" she asked.
When asked what would she tell Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman if he was here, Cengiz said: “I would ask why Jamal Khashoggi was killed.
"I don't want to share the same space with them, but if it was unavoidable, I would ask why did this happen. Where is his body because we still don’t know where it is.”
Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, was killed and later his body was dismembered by a group of Saudi operatives in October 2018, shortly after he entered the consulate in Istanbul to get some documents.
After weeks of denying involvement, Saudi Arabia admitted that Khashoggi had been killed at the consulate, but claimed that the royal family had no prior knowledge of a plot.
Last September, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman accepted responsibility for the killing, but denied ordering it.
Before his murder, Khashoggi was planning to marry Turkish academic Cengiz.
Real face of Saudi Arabia
Also speaking at the session, Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni journalist and activist, said Khashoggi’s murder has “revealed the real face of Saudi Arabia.”
“Only ISIS [another name for Daesh] can do this kind of killing. Only Saudi Arabia dares to do this kind of killing,” she said.
“The same regime, who killed Jamal Khashoggi and dismembered his body, is the same regime, the same killer, who is killing my people in Yemen every day.
“We, as Yemenis, know that they take the responsibility and Mohammed Bin Salman, himself is the one, who ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi,” she added.
Ayman Nour, former Egyptian presidential candidate, said: “He wasn't a normal person. He wasn’t a normal journalist. He wasn't a normal writer. He was someone, who wanted to change.”
“He was a person, who was a victim of the change in the Arab world and the Arab Spring,” said Nour, who was a close friend of Khashoggi.
David Hearst, the editor in chief of London-based online news outlet Middle East Eye, said: "What was the purpose of murdering Jamal. It was to stop moderate Saudi voice speaking up in DC. That was the purpose of it."
"What happens after, since Jamal's death. He has become a symbol of everything that the regime pretended it was not," Hearst said.
