https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/20/middleeast/iran-drone-claim-hnk-intl/index.html
2019-06-20 06:54:00Z
52780317816762
CNN's Daniel Allman contributed to this report.
GENEVA — Saudi Arabia is responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in its Istanbul consulate last year, and there is “credible evidence” justifying an investigation into the role of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, a United Nations expert said in a report released on Wednesday.
The expert, Agnes Callamard, also said that the United Nations secretary general should establish an international criminal investigation to ensure accountability for the crime.
“There is credible evidence warranting further investigation of high-level Saudi officials’ individual liability, including the crown prince’s,” Ms. Callamard said in a 100-page report, issued after a five-month investigation.
Prince Mohammed, the day-to-day ruler of Saudi Arabia, was already widely suspected of having ordered the killing, a conclusion reached by Western intelligence agencies.
But the report by Ms. Callamard, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions for the United Nations human rights agency, is the most complete set of findings yet made public on the death of Mr. Khashoggi, a dissident Saudi writer who lived in the United States.
“Evidence points to the 15-person mission to execute Mr. Khashoggi requiring significant government coordination, resources and finances,” Ms. Callamard wrote. “Every expert consulted finds it inconceivable that an operation of this scale could be implemented without the crown prince being aware, at a minimum, that some sort of mission of a criminal nature, directed at Mr. Khashoggi, was being launched.”
Mr. Khashoggi disappeared after visiting the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to obtain papers that would have enabled him to marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, who was waiting outside.
[Here is what we know about the details of Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance.]
Saudi officials said at first that Mr. Khashoggi had left the consulate alive and denied any knowledge of his whereabouts, but they later admitted that he had been killed in the building after what they said was a botched mission to bring him back to Saudi Arabia. A “local collaborator” disposed of his body, Saudi officials have said, but it has not been found.
“Mr. Khashoggi’s killing constituted an extrajudicial killing for which the state of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is responsible,” and may also have been an act of torture under international treaties, Ms. Callamard wrote. “His attempted kidnapping would also constitute a violation under international human rights law.”
Saudi Arabia has put 11 officials identified as being linked to the killing on trial, but has conducted the proceedings in secret.
[Many of the suspects had ties to Prince Mohammed. Read more here.]
Ms. Callamard said that the trial failed to meet international standards. She called for Saudi Arabia to suspend the trial and cooperate with the United Nations in conducting further investigations and in deciding on the format and location of a trial. Failing that, she said, it should carry out further investigations and allow international participation in the trial.
Ms. Callamard coupled her recommendation with a scathing assessment of Saudi Arabia’s actions after the murder. She said that Saudi Arabia’s investigation of the crime had not been conducted in good faith and that it may have amounted to obstruction of justice, citing evidence that officials hindered the work of Turkish investigators, including having the murder scene forensically cleaned before it could be examined.
She said that Saudi Arabia had not cooperated with her inquiry, failing to respond to her requests to visit the kingdom.
She urged the F.B.I. to open an investigation, if it has not already done so, and she asked the United States to make a determination under American law on the responsibility of the crown prince for Mr. Khashoggi’s death.
[Prince Mohammed has close ties to President Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The Khashoggi case puts them in an uncomfortable position.]
Ms. Callamard also called on the international community to impose targeted sanctions on Saudi officials said to have been involved in the murder, including Prince Mohammed. The sanctions should focus on the prince’s personal assets abroad “until and unless evidence has been produced that he bears no responsibility for the execution of Mr. Khashoggi.”
Ms. Callamard is to present her findings to the Human Rights Council in Geneva next week in a session that will also be addressed by Ms. Cengiz, Mr. Khashoggi’s fiancé.
The limpet mines used to attack a Japanese-owned oil tanker near the Strait of Hormuz last week bore "a striking resemblance" to similar mines displayed by Iran, a U.S. Navy explosives expert said Wednesday, stopping short of directly blaming Tehran for the assault. The comments by Cmdr. Sean Kido came as the Navy showed reporters pieces of debris and a magnet they said Iran's Revolutionary Guard left behind when they spirited away an unexploded limpet mine after the June 13 attack in the Gulf of Oman.
Kido showed the journalists, including CBS News correspondent Charlie D'Agata, fragments from one of the exploded weapons the U.S. says were used in the attack, in addition to the magnet left affixed to the Japanese ship.
D'Agata said the information was clearly meant to stack up the case against Iran. The Trump administration has insisted Iran was to blame since not long after the attacks last week, and it has steadily ratcheted up that casting of blame and tried to convince allies around the world to point the finger at Tehran, too.
In the media briefing in the Gulf on Wednesday, however, D'Agata said all the Navy would confirm was that the limpet mines used bear "a striking resemblance" to those made and shown off previously by Iran -- in other words, no smoking gun. D'Agata noted that the limpet mines used in the attacks are prolific weapons, found in many places in the world.
Nevertheless, the Navy showed a picture previously shared among weapons experts of a limpet mine on display in Iran, which they said resembled the one they suspected was used on the ship. That picture showed a conical mine, some 90 pounds in weight, on display with a sign next to it identifying it as being produced by a research company affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard.
"The limpet mine that was used does bear a striking resemblance to that which has been publicly displayed in Iranian military parades," Kido said. "There are distinguishing features."
The 5th Fleet officials also said investigators had recovered fingerprints and a hand print from the Japanese tanker, and D'Agata said they made it clear more details could be released in the coming days.
The Navy officials said it was hard to pry one of the magnets used to adhere a limpet mine off of a ship's hull. D'Agata said it took a couple U.S. service members with a crowbar to pry just the single leftover magnet off the Kokuka. The Navy officials said six of the magnets -- each about the size of a softball -- would be used to hold a limpet mine in place on a vessel.
Thus far, German and British officials, along with Iran's arch-rival Saudi Arabia, have backed the U.S. in blaming Iran, or at least saying the evidence suggesting Iranian culpability is strong.
Iran has consistently and completely denied any role in the attacks on tankers near the vital shipping channel of the Strait of Hormuz -- both the recent ones on the two ships in the Gulf of Oman and similar attacks on four tankers last month off the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah.
"Accusations levelled against Iran's armed forces and the published film with regards to the incident (that) happened to the vessels ... are unsubstantiated and we categorically reject these accusations," Iran's semi-official IRNA news agency quoted Defence Minister Brigadier-General Amir Hatami as saying.
The attack on the oil tankers came against the backdrop of heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran that take root in President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers a year ago.
American officials believe Iran may well be the driving force behind a series of other smaller-scale attacks in the Middle East in recent weeks, including on Saudi oil pipelines and U.S. and allied bases in Iraq.
There was no claim of responsibility, and no culpability assigned immediately for a rocket that hit an oil-drilling site in Iraq's southern Basra province early on Wednesday. The rocket struck inside a compound housing energy giant Exxon Mobil and other foreign oil companies and wounding three local workers, one seriously, Iraqi officials said.
U.S. military officials told CBS News senior national security correspondent David Martin they did not yet "have a good feel" for who was behind the rocket attack.
In recent weeks, the U.S. has sped an aircraft carrier to the Mideast and deployed additional troops to the tens of thousands already here. All this has raised fears that a miscalculation or further rise in tensions could push the U.S. and Iran into an open conflict, some 40 years after Tehran's Islamic Revolution.
Since President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal, Iran has threatened to stop adhering to the limits on its nuclear program. It recently quadrupled its production of low-enriched uranium and threatened to boost its enrichment closer to weapons-grade levels, trying to pressure Europe for new terms to the 2015 deal.
If Iran makes the determination that Europe is not going to risk violating U.S. sanctions to keep doing business with Tehran, it has said it will ramp up uranium enrichment.
An expert told CBS News that Iran could produce enough enriched uranium to be officially in violation of the nuclear deal's terms within days.
That move would likely see the United Nations Security Council petitioned by the U.S. to reinstate broad international sanctions against Iran that were lifted under the terms of the 2015 deal.
GENEVA — Saudi Arabia is responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in its Istanbul consulate last year, and there is “credible evidence” justifying an investigation into the role of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, a United Nations expert said in a report released on Wednesday.
The expert, Agnes Callamard, also said that the United Nations secretary general should establish an international criminal investigation to ensure accountability for the crime.
“There is credible evidence warranting further investigation of high-level Saudi officials’ individual liability, including the crown prince’s,” Ms. Callamard said in a 100-page report, issued after a five-month investigation.
Prince Mohammed, the day-to-day ruler of Saudi Arabia, was already widely suspected of having ordered the killing, a conclusion reached by Western intelligence agencies.
But the report by Ms. Callamard, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions for the United Nations human rights agency, is the most complete set of findings yet made public on the death of Mr. Khashoggi, a dissident Saudi writer who lived in the United States.
“Evidence points to the 15-person mission to execute Mr. Khashoggi requiring significant government coordination, resources and finances,” Ms. Callamard wrote. “Every expert consulted finds it inconceivable that an operation of this scale could be implemented without the crown prince being aware, at a minimum, that some sort of mission of a criminal nature, directed at Mr. Khashoggi, was being launched.”
Mr. Khashoggi disappeared after visiting the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to obtain papers that would have enabled him to marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, who was waiting outside.
[Here is what we know about the details of Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance.]
Saudi officials said at first that Mr. Khashoggi had left the consulate alive and denied any knowledge of his whereabouts, but they later admitted that he had been killed in the building after what they said was a botched mission to bring him back to Saudi Arabia. A “local collaborator” disposed of his body, Saudi officials have said, but it has not been found.
“Mr. Khashoggi’s killing constituted an extrajudicial killing for which the state of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is responsible,” and may also have been an act of torture under international treaties, Ms. Callamard wrote. “His attempted kidnapping would also constitute a violation under international human rights law.”
Saudi Arabia has put 11 officials identified as being linked to the killing on trial, but has conducted the proceedings in secret.
[Many of the suspects had ties to Prince Mohammed. Read more here.]
Ms. Callamard said that the trial failed to meet international standards. She called for Saudi Arabia to suspend the trial and cooperate with the United Nations in conducting further investigations and in deciding on the format and location of a trial. Failing that, she said, it should carry out further investigations and allow international participation in the trial.
Ms. Callamard coupled her recommendation with a scathing assessment of Saudi Arabia’s actions after the murder. She said that Saudi Arabia’s investigation of the crime had not been conducted in good faith and that it may have amounted to obstruction of justice, citing evidence that officials hindered the work of Turkish investigators, including having the murder scene forensically cleaned before it could be examined.
She said that Saudi Arabia had not cooperated with her inquiry, failing to respond to her requests to visit the kingdom.
She urged the F.B.I. to open an investigation, if it has not already done so, and she asked the United States to make a determination under American law on the responsibility of the crown prince for Mr. Khashoggi’s death.
[Prince Mohammed has close ties to President Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The Khashoggi case puts them in an uncomfortable position.]
Ms. Callamard also called on the international community to impose targeted sanctions on Saudi officials said to have been involved in the murder, including Prince Mohammed. The sanctions should focus on the prince’s personal assets abroad “until and unless evidence has been produced that he bears no responsibility for the execution of Mr. Khashoggi.”
Ms. Callamard is to present her findings to the Human Rights Council in Geneva next week in a session that will also be addressed by Ms. Cengiz, Mr. Khashoggi’s fiancé.
GENEVA — Saudi Arabia is responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in its Istanbul consulate last year, and there is “credible evidence” justifying an investigation into the role of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, a United Nations expert said in a report released on Wednesday.
The expert, Agnes Callamard, also said that the United Nations secretary general should establish an international criminal investigation to ensure accountability for the crime.
“There is credible evidence warranting further investigation of high-level Saudi officials’ individual liability, including the crown prince’s,” Ms. Callamard said in a 100-page report, issued after a five-month investigation.
Prince Mohammed, the day-to-day ruler of Saudi Arabia, was already widely suspected of having ordered the killing, a conclusion reached by Western intelligence agencies.
But the report by Ms. Callamard, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions for the United Nations human rights agency, is the most complete set of findings yet made public on the death of Mr. Khashoggi, a dissident Saudi writer who lived in the United States.
“Evidence points to the 15-person mission to execute Mr. Khashoggi requiring significant government coordination, resources and finances,” Ms. Callamard wrote. “Every expert consulted finds it inconceivable that an operation of this scale could be implemented without the crown prince being aware, at a minimum, that some sort of mission of a criminal nature, directed at Mr. Khashoggi, was being launched.”
Mr. Khashoggi disappeared after visiting the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to obtain papers that would have enabled him to marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, who was waiting outside.
[Here is what we know about the details of Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance.]
Saudi officials said at first that Mr. Khashoggi had left the consulate alive and denied any knowledge of his whereabouts, but they later admitted that he had been killed in the building after what they said was a botched mission to bring him back to Saudi Arabia. A “local collaborator” disposed of his body, Saudi officials have said, but it has not been found.
“Mr. Khashoggi’s killing constituted an extrajudicial killing for which the state of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is responsible,” and may also have been an act of torture under international treaties, Ms. Callamard wrote. “His attempted kidnapping would also constitute a violation under international human rights law.”
Saudi Arabia has put 11 officials identified as being linked to the killing on trial, but has conducted the proceedings in secret.
[Many of the suspects had ties to Prince Mohammed. Read more here.]
Ms. Callamard said that the trial failed to meet international standards. She called for Saudi Arabia to suspend the trial and cooperate with the United Nations in conducting further investigations and in deciding on the format and location of a trial. Failing that, she said, it should carry out further investigations and allow international participation in the trial.
Ms. Callamard coupled her recommendation with a scathing assessment of Saudi Arabia’s actions after the murder. She said that Saudi Arabia’s investigation of the crime had not been conducted in good faith and that it may have amounted to obstruction of justice, citing evidence that officials hindered the work of Turkish investigators, including having the murder scene forensically cleaned before it could be examined.
She said that Saudi Arabia had not cooperated with her inquiry, failing to respond to her requests to visit the kingdom.
She urged the F.B.I. to open an investigation, if it has not already done so, and she asked the United States to make a determination under American law on the responsibility of the crown prince for Mr. Khashoggi’s death.
[Prince Mohammed has close ties to President Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The Khashoggi case puts them in an uncomfortable position.]
Ms. Callamard also called on the international community to impose targeted sanctions on Saudi officials said to have been involved in the murder, including Prince Mohammed. The sanctions should focus on the prince’s personal assets abroad “until and unless evidence has been produced that he bears no responsibility for the execution of Mr. Khashoggi.”
Ms. Callamard is to present her findings to the Human Rights Council in Geneva next week in a session that will also be addressed by Ms. Cengiz, Mr. Khashoggi’s fiancé.
GENEVA — Saudi Arabia is responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in its Istanbul consulate last year, and there is “credible evidence” justifying an investigation into the role of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, a United Nations expert said in a report released on Wednesday.
The expert, Agnes Callamard, also said that the United Nations secretary general should establish an international criminal investigation to ensure accountability for the crime.
“There is credible evidence warranting further investigation of high-level Saudi officials’ individual liability, including the crown prince’s,” Ms. Callamard said in a 100-page report, issued after a five-month investigation.
Prince Mohammed, the day-to-day ruler of Saudi Arabia, was already widely suspected of having ordered the killing, a conclusion reached by Western intelligence agencies.
But the report by Ms. Callamard, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions for the United Nations human rights agency, is the most complete set of findings yet made public on the death of Mr. Khashoggi, a dissident Saudi writer who lived in the United States.
“Evidence points to the 15-person mission to execute Mr. Khashoggi requiring significant government coordination, resources and finances,” Ms. Callamard wrote. “Every expert consulted finds it inconceivable that an operation of this scale could be implemented without the crown prince being aware, at a minimum, that some sort of mission of a criminal nature, directed at Mr. Khashoggi, was being launched.”
Mr. Khashoggi disappeared after visiting the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to obtain papers that would have enabled him to marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, who was waiting outside.
[Here is what we know about the details of Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance.]
Saudi officials said at first that Mr. Khashoggi had left the consulate alive and denied any knowledge of his whereabouts, but they later admitted that he had been killed in the building after what they said was a botched mission to bring him back to Saudi Arabia. A “local collaborator” disposed of his body, Saudi officials have said, but it has not been found.
“Mr. Khashoggi’s killing constituted an extrajudicial killing for which the state of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is responsible,” and may also have been an act of torture under international treaties, Ms. Callamard wrote. “His attempted kidnapping would also constitute a violation under international human rights law.”
Saudi Arabia has put 11 officials identified as being linked to the killing on trial, but has conducted the proceedings in secret.
[Many of the suspects had ties to Prince Mohammed. Read more here.]
Ms. Callamard said that the trial failed to meet international standards. She called for Saudi Arabia to suspend the trial and cooperate with the United Nations in conducting further investigations and in deciding on the format and location of a trial. Failing that, she said, it should carry out further investigations and allow international participation in the trial.
Ms. Callamard coupled her recommendation with a scathing assessment of Saudi Arabia’s actions after the murder. She said that Saudi Arabia’s investigation of the crime had not been conducted in good faith and that it may have amounted to obstruction of justice, citing evidence that officials hindered the work of Turkish investigators, including having the murder scene forensically cleaned before it could be examined.
She said that Saudi Arabia had not cooperated with her inquiry, failing to respond to her requests to visit the kingdom.
She urged the F.B.I. to open an investigation, if it has not already done so, and she asked the United States to make a determination under American law on the responsibility of the crown prince for Mr. Khashoggi’s death.
[Prince Mohammed has close ties to President Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The Khashoggi case puts them in an uncomfortable position.]
Ms. Callamard also called on the international community to impose targeted sanctions on Saudi officials said to have been involved in the murder, including Prince Mohammed. The sanctions should focus on the prince’s personal assets abroad “until and unless evidence has been produced that he bears no responsibility for the execution of Mr. Khashoggi.”
Ms. Callamard is to present her findings to the Human Rights Council in Geneva next week in a session that will also be addressed by Ms. Cengiz, Mr. Khashoggi’s fiancé.