Saudi Arabia Compounds the Cruelty of Khashoggi’s Murder

In its own twisted way, Saudi Arabia is trying to demonstrate that it is taking the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi seriously. That’s one way to interpret this week’s announcement from the Saudi prosecutor that he will seek the death penalty for five of the late columnist’s murderers, and jail time for six others.

One can almost understand this approach. Remember all of the shabby lies Saudi officials told about Khashoggi over the last six weeks. First they said he had walked out of the Istanbul consulate where he was murdered. Then they said the 60-year-old journalist had died in a fistfight with Saudi officials. The latest line from the prosecutor is that he was injected with a drug that killed him after a struggle with consulate officials in an operation meant to abduct him and bring him to Saudi Arabia.