IT is almost two months since the October 2, 2018 murder of 60 year-old Jamal Khashoggi (a Saudi Arabia-born journalist with The Washington Post) inside the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, Turkey.

Jamal Khashoggi

Turkish and other international intelligence services have not only accused Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, as the authority who ordered the killing, they have also been releasing graphic video details of how he was allegedly tortured by a group of Saudi state operatives and gruesomely murdered. Khashoggi was a resident of the US and a vocal critic of the ruling family of Saudi Arabia.

When the news of his disappearance broke, the Saudi authorities told one lie after the other to shield the truth. First, they said he had walked out of the embassy. Later, they said he died while fighting with officials in the embassy. Finally, they admitted he was killed by a drug which was injected into him with the intention of abducting him to Saudi Arabia.

These perceived “fairy tales” were obviously meant to shield the Crown Prince’s involvement. In further efforts in this direction, the prosecutor of the case, Saud al-Mojeb, “vowed” to seek the death penalty on five of the accused persons while the rest would probably be kept to rot in jail so as to prevent a future exposure of Bin Salman’s involvement.

To underscore the importance of Khashoggi’s murder, the Crown Prince’s National Transformation Programme has been downgraded by many hitherto-enthusiastic foreign subscribers. The US, Germany and some other Western nations have placed sanctions on some Saudi officials, and there are moves by the US legislature to extend the sanctions to Bin Salman, the Saudi heir-apparent.

Turkey, which has enthusiastically continued to keep the murder in the limelight, along with Iran (Saudi’s sworn enemy) hopes to drive a wedge between the West (especially the US) and Saudi Arabia. But the US President, Donald Trump, who is belligerent towards Iran, has firmly reiterated the strength of the US – Saudi ties.

It is sad but not surprising that the Nigerian government has not raised a voice on this murder. The Nigerian ruling establishment is traditionally pro-Saudi. The regime of President Muhammadu Buhari is not an exception, especially in view of its wars against the Iran-backed Shiite Muslims led by Sheikh Ibrahim el Zakzaky.

But Nigeria is a modern, Western-model democracy whose constitution and state practices subscribe to the universal charter on human rights, the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of life. We do not believe that journalism is a crime punishable by state murder.

We condemn in the strongest terms this spine-chilling crime the Saudi ruling house has committed against its own citizen. The world must ensure that those involved, no matter how privileged, will never go free.