She investigated Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. Now UN official says America must reveal what it knows

There is a recording of a murder. Agnes Callamard has listened to that 15 minutes, in which Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is suffocated and strangled in his country’s Istanbul consulate. She has heard the strange low humming that comes once the voices have stopped that experts believe is the sound of a buzzsaw, being used to dismember the body of a 59-year-old.

Callamard, who investigated the death for the UN, is one of just a few people to have listened to that recording but, though she has heard the moment Khashoggi was killed, many of the details surrounding those 15 minutes remain a mystery, two and a half years on.

Turkish prosecutors and the US intelligence community have alleged that the murder was ordered by Saudi’s crown prince, an allegation adamantly rejected by Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). Now Callamard says she believes the US government still holds information about the killing that could help bring accountability to those responsible.

“For the US to be able to put out in the public domain the information they have regarding the threats against Jamal, [and] their assessment of the threat, is fundamental,” says Callamard, who is now secretary general of Amnesty International.

“It’s really important – along with the evidence they have of MBS’s responsibility – because there are court cases in the US right now, and they may be sitting on information with regard to the killing. That to me... well, it’s really unacceptable.”

Her call for transparency comes after a flurry of new information about the murder. It has emerged that at least four of the dozen-strong hit team – part of the Tiger Squad – had received paramilitary training from an Arkansas security firm – a contract that required approval from the US State Department, according to The New York Times. Campaigners have filed a lawsuit against the US government, demanding the release all records related to the murder. A media rights group has questioned whether the US knew in advance of the threat to Khashoggi, a US resident, and failed in its legal duty to warn him. The group has been joined by Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), an organisation that Khashoggi established in Washington DC.

The announcement that Callamard, a French citizen with a long history of investigating human rights abuses, would lead an investigation into the Saudi citizen’s death was made in January 2019, three months after Khashoggi went missing. It had taken three weeks for the Saudi authorities to confirm he was dead. They initially claimed Khashoggi had died in a fistfight, having entered the consulate to collect documents that would permit him to marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz.

Cengiz had waited outside the consulate on that October day, thinking Khashoggi would return shortly with the paperwork declaring his previous marriage to a woman in Saudi Arabia was legally over. As it was, she would never see him again.

open image in gallery

Saudi Arabia claimed it had arrested up to 20 senior officials, including Saud al-Qahtani, the powerful adviser to MBS, and General Ahmed al-Asiri, a high-ranking intelligence official.

Callamard spent six months on the investigation, travelling to Istanbul, Ankara, Washington, Ottawa, Paris, London, Berlin, New York City, Geneva and Brussels. Yet, even with the backing of the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, and the resources of the organisation, her ability to fully penetrate the crime was limited.

Saudi Arabia ignored her request to visit the nation and talk to officials. Later, it would emerge, it even issued what was perceived to be a death threat. Callamard was told by colleagues in January 2020 that a senior Saudi official had threatened to have her “taken care of”.

And while Turkish investigators had collected hours of audio recordings from inside the consulate, and the residence of the consul general, they only provided her access to portions of it – a total of 45 minutes from 48 hours of content.

She says they would not give her a copy to take away to have independently examined, and did not want her to take notes, though she did. The meeting with Turkish officials when they played the audio lasted three to four hours, and was “difficult”. “They were very anxious,” she says.

The first audio she was played had been recorded an hour after Khashoggi and Cengiz visited the Saudi consulate for the first time, on 28 September 2018, to ask about obtaining documents. It consisted of a call from Saudi officials in Istanbul back to their bosses in Riyadh explaining that Khashoggi had visited the consulate and asking whether he was one of the people being sought by the government. It appeared those Saudi officials in Turkey were surprised by his visit.

Then there were several conversations relating to the operation that would quickly be put in place to snatch Khashoggi. It involved the dispatch of a 12-member hit squad, one that was highly trained and had worked together, says Callamard.

The last two recordings she heard were from the day of the murder, 2 October 2018. The first was a conversation between a forensic doctor dispatched to Istanbul and the head of the covert operation. Several issues were discussed, she says, including “how to cut up a body”.

“It’s a general description. It does not mention Jamal Khashoggi but he talks about how a body can easily be cut up outside of a forensic lab. And the doctor is saying, ‘You know, it’s not that complicated, but we need to do A, B and C.’” Callamard adds: “That is the strongest possible evidence we have that the killing of Jamal was planned … In other words, the Saudis pretended that he fell over … but that recording clearly shows what they were considering, that they will cut up Jamal’s body, even before he arrived in the consulate.”

She says the final part of the third section ends with mention of “the sacrificial lamb”. She says: “There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that they were referring to Jamal.”

How did she feel when she heard it? “Everything is in Arabic, so I have a distance between what’s happening because of my non-comprehension of Arabic,” she says.

“My translator was somebody I took with me from Geneva. He got everything, and he was traumatised by what he heard.”

She adds: “For me it was mediated because I could not understand. The sounds were very confronting, and even though I could capture the rising tension, it’s not the same as if they had been speaking in English or in French.”

Earlier this year, the Biden administration made public a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which said the US intelligence community had concluded that MBS had ordered the killing. While Saudi Arabia and the crown prince rejected the finding of the report, US officials said the decision-making process in the kingdom made them certain he was involved.

Yet when Biden released the report, he also made clear he had no intention of sanctioning MBS himself, or changing in any meaningful way the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia. On the presidential campaign trial he vowed to make Saudi “the pariah they are”, but that appears to have been forgotten.

open image in gallery

The same day on which the ODNI report was published, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the relationship between the two countries was “bigger than any one person”.

Activists believe the US has not been fully transparent about what it knows about the murder, and whether there was a warning of any potential danger that officials should have given to Khashoggi.

While Khashoggi’s fiancée sued MBS, accusing him of murder and seeking a conviction by a civil court, campaigners also launched a lawsuit against the US government, seeking to force it to release any documents, recordings or other evidence it had.

The Open Society Justice Initiative sought the release of all records “including, but not limited to, the CIA’s findings on and/or assessment of the circumstances under which he was killed and/or the identities of those responsible”. The suit has been joined by Khashoggi’s Dawn organisation.

Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Dawn, says the recent flurry of new information proves there is a great deal still not known about the murder. It is essential, she says, that the US be transparent. “This Egyptian revelation and the revelation about the US [training for the Saudi] contractors, raise more questions than they answer,” she says.

“What’s clear at this point is the murder of Jamal Khashoggi was indeed an international crime, involving not only the murder of an American resident in Turkey, but the involvement and participation of multinational actors.”

She says the Biden administration is refusing to release the information her group and others are demanding “to find out exactly what our intelligence community knew about the murder and when”.

In the summer of 2019, Callamard published the conclusions of her investigation. Her report called Khashoggi “the victim of a premeditated extrajudicial execution, for which the state of Saudi Arabia is responsible”.

It said 15 Saudi agents acted under cover of their official status and used state means to execute him. It said the murder was the result of elaborate planning and extensive resources, and was premeditated. Of MBS, it said there was “credible evidence warranting further investigation of high-level Saudi officials’ individual liability, including that of the crown prince”.

It also said Saudi Arabia had sought to cover its tracks, and called on any nations holding pertinent information to release it.

open image in gallery

Callamard says it appears “less and less” likely the US was not aware of a threat to Khashoggi. “Everything that we are hearing is pointing to such a close nexus between the US and Saudi Arabia, including at an intelligence level,” she says.

“And this, coming on top of the leaks very early on… It’s only a hypothesis, I have no material evidence, but it [increases] the likelihood of the US having captured intelligence regarding threats to Jamal.”

The White House did not reply to inquiries from The Independent. The CIA and the ODNI referred to the US intelligence report from February, but failed to respond to the issue of whether the US had information in advance about the threat to Khashoggi. The State Department said it could not comment on intelligence matters. The Saudi embassy in Washington DC, its foreign ministry and one of its US lawyers also did not respond to a request for comment.

If Callamard believes the US had intelligence about Khashoggi, why was he not warned? Callamard says intelligence is an imperfect system. It is possible it was considered the threat was not viable, that they thought they had dealt with any threat.

“And those guys collect millions of data, so we just need to place that in the context of counterterrorism intelligence-gathering and so on and so forth. That is why there is a possibility that when the intelligence pointed to a threat to Jamal, they may have done an assessment that the threat was not imminent, you know – it could be possible it would have been a mistake.”

She does not believe the US would intentionally decide not to warn Khashoggi. “I’m not one for conspiracies, so in my view, if something happened to screw up, [it was] a bad assessment.”

Callamard says she was disappointed by the paucity of evidence contained in the ODNI report: it was “just a summary, a high level summary of intelligence, [with ] no material evidence provided”.

And what of the US officials? “If they have information of any kind, and any source, regarding the killing, if they have information pointing to the extent of the responsibility of MBS, or the stops in Cairo, and they are not making it public, they are making themselves complicit of impunity,” she says.

Does she believe that is currently the US position? “There is no doubt at the moment that until and unless the information at their disposal is made public, they are contributing to impunity.”

Why does Callamard believe the US would risk behaving in such a way in relation to such a notorious crime? “I mean, geostrategic and economic interests trump the life of a Washington Post journalist – it’s that simple,” she says.

“To be perfectly frank, the US is not the only one. You know, it is France, the UK, Germany. [They] may not have the same level of information that they could disclose, but through their action, they certainly are contributing to a regime of impunity around that killing.”

What action is she referring to?

She says: “They have not taken any action. They have not punished in any way those at the highest level of the state. The sanctions that are being imposed against some individuals have absolutely no impact.”

Only a handful of Saudi diplomats and security officials have been sanctioned, she says. “That’s why I’m saying, the absence of measures against Saudi Arabia, [and] punishing MBS and the others, is contributing to a regime of impunity.”