The "Jenner and Block" law firm, on behalf of Khadija Genghis, the fiancé of the late Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and the "Democracy Now for the Arab World" organization, filed a lawsuit before a federal court in Washington against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and more than 20 people participating in The Khashoggi murder case.
Keith M. Harper, a former US ambassador and one of the partners in the law firm, said that the goals of the lawsuit filed on Tuesday were to hold the perpetrators of the torture and brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, who was residing in the United States, accountable, as well as determine the whole truth through judicial procedures.
Robert C. Harmla, a partner at the law firm Jenner and Block, said that planning to murder a US resident writes for the Washington Post and heads a Washington-based organization that makes the defendants subject to the US justice system.
The Washington Post reported that the lawsuit brought by Khadija Cengiz and Democracy Now for the Arab World, a non-profit organization Khashoggi founded in the United States prior to his death, accuses Mohammed bin Salman of ordering the liquidation of the late journalist in order to permanently extinguish his calls for democratic reforms in the Arab world.
The newspaper pointed out that the CIA concluded in 2018 that the Saudi crown prince had ordered the killing of Khashoggi, which contradicts Saudi statements that he was not involved in the assassination, which then sparked widespread outrage in the world.
It quoted Genghis as saying yesterday, during a video conference in which a number of lawyers who filed the lawsuit, that the Saudi crown prince killed Khashoggi because he called for democracy in the Middle East, and that he targeted him because he called for it while he was in the United States.
Genghis urged the US government to stand by its side in its quest to uncover the truth about Khashoggi's assassination, and hold those responsible for the crime to account.
It is reported that Khashoggi was killed and his body was dismembered inside his country's embassy in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2, 2018.
Early last month, the Criminal Court in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, issued final verdicts in the case of Khashoggi's murder, and sentenced 8 convicts to prison terms ranging from 7 to 20 years, reversing previous rulings that had imposed the death penalty for 5 of them.