Reactions to the final rulings issued by the Criminal Court in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on Monday, in the case of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in his country's consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.

Fakhruddin Altun, director of communications in the Turkish presidency, said that the Saudi court ruling in the Khashoggi case did not meet Turkey's expectations, and urged the authorities in Riyadh to cooperate with an investigation by Ankara.

Alton added in a tweet on Twitter, "We still do not know what happened to Khashoggi's body, who wanted to kill him or whether there were local collaborators, which casts doubts on the reliability of the legal procedures in Saudi Arabia."

Callamard said that the officials who planned the crime remained free (Al Jazeera)

A comic parody of justice

For her part, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Agnes Callamard, considered the judgments issued by the Saudi Criminal Court as "not of any legal and moral legitimacy."

Callamard criticized, through her account on social networking sites, the prison decisions issued in the case, saying, "They have completed a trial that is not fair, fair or transparent."

She described the trial as a "farcical simulation of justice," noting that the Saudi officials who planned and adopted the crime remained free without any influence on investigations or trials.

The UN official called for not allowing those involved in the Khashoggi murder to be acquitted through these rulings, stressing that those decisions should not reduce pressure on governments to ensure that the true criminals are revealed.

Khashoggi's fiancé described the rulings as a farce (Anatolia)

A farce trial

In turn, Khadija Genghis, Khashoggi's fiancé, described the final judgments issued by the Saudi judiciary as a "farce", accusing Riyadh of closing the file without revealing the identities of the actual planners of the crime.

"The international community will not accept this farce," Cengiz wrote on Twitter. "The Saudi authorities closed this file without the world knowing who was really responsible for killing Jamal."

"Who planned the crime? Who ordered it? Where is the body? These are the most important questions that remain unanswered," she asked.

On Monday, the Criminal Court in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, issued final verdicts in the case of Khashoggi's murder in his country's consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, and sentenced eight convicts to prison terms ranging from 7 to 20 years, reversing previous rulings that had imposed the execution of 5 of them.

The spokesman for the Public Prosecution office said that the court had sentenced 5 of the convicted to 20 years in prison, 3 others 10 years in prison, and 7 years in prison for two of the convicted.

The spokesman added - according to what was reported by the Saudi Press Agency - that the sentences issued came after the termination of the right to the legal assignment of the relatives of the deceased.