- A senior Saudi official is said to have threatened to “take care of everything” for UN investigator Khashoggi.
- UN expert Agnès Callamard implicated Saudi Crown Prince MBS in his report on Khashoggi.
- Callamard told the Guardian that the reported death threats did not affect his work.
- See more stories on the Insider business page.
A senior Saudi official launched a death threat against Agnès Callamard, the United Nations special rapporteur who conducted an investigation into the brutal murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Guardian said on Tuesday.
Callamard told the Guardian that a colleague in January 2020 told her that a senior Saudi official at a meeting with senior UN officials in Geneva that same month had twice threatened to “look after her”.
She said her colleagues in Geneva understood the comments as “a death threat”. The meeting involved Saudi diplomats based in Geneva, visiting Saudi officials and UN officials. Saudi officials criticized Callamard’s investigation into Khashoggi’s murder, the Guardian reported, and expressed anger at his findings. One of the visiting Saudi officials would have said that he had received calls from people prepared to “look after” Callamard if the UN had not taken any action.
The UN officials who were present declined the comments, as the other Saudi officials present tried to minimize the comments, according to the report.
“It was reported to me at the time and it was an occasion when the United Nations was very strong on this issue. The people who were present, and also later, made it clear to the Saudi delegation that this was absolutely inappropriate and that there was an expectation that it shouldn’t go any further, “said Callamard.
“You know, these threats don’t work for me. Well, I don’t want to ask for more threats. But I have to do what I have to do. It hasn’t stopped me from acting in a way that I think is the right thing to do” , added Callamard, who is expected to start a new role as secretary general of Amnesty International this month.
The Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.
Callamard’s investigation directly implicated Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the kingdom, in the assassination of Khashoggi in October 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Khashoggi was a columnist for the Washington Post at the time of his assassination and used to criticize the Saudi government – including Prince Mohammed – in his writings.
The June 2019 UN report compiled by Callamard described Khashoggi’s murder as “a deliberate and premeditated execution, an extrajudicial murder for which the state of Saudi Arabia is responsible under international human rights law”.
“There is reliable evidence to warrant further investigation into the individual responsibility of senior Saudi officials, including that of the Crown Prince,” the report said.
A recently released US intelligence report offered similar conclusions, assessing that “Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman has approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.”