Hanan Elatr, widow of Saudi journalist Yamal Khashogi, has asked the United Nations and the United States to intercede with Turkey in order to retrieve her husband’s electronic devices — killed in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul in 2018 — as she intends to use them in upcoming legal proceedings.
«I am entitled to receive all of his possessions, especially now that I am embarking on a legal action in the United States against all parties responsible for my husband’s murder,» the journalist’s wife has demanded in several letters sent in November and January accessed by NBC.
In them she asks to be handed over Khashogi’s laptop, tablet and two cell phones, as they could contain «undisclosed details» about his murder in view of the legal proceedings she plans to initiate in the United States against the Saudi and Emirati governments, as well as against the Israeli cyber agency NSO Group, creator of the Pegasus spy software.
Elatr explained that Turkey recovered these devices shortly after her husband’s murder and that despite her personal requests to the Turkish government and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, she has not been listened to, beyond referring her to the appropriate legal channels represented by the Ottoman country’s courts.
However, Elatr, an Emirati citizen and asylum seeker in the United States, has explained that she cannot appeal to the Turkish justice system due to lack of passport and financial resources. Moreover, her time is running out. In November, the deadline to file a complaint against NSO Group expires, after learning that it spied on her phone and that it could have done the same with those of her husband.
«It is not only Saudi Arabia that is guilty. There are many who are and we have the right to know and bring them to justice,» Elatr said in an interview for NBC, in which she also points to the responsibility of the United Arab Emirates and NSO Group, which has always denied that Pegasus had anything to do with this «heinous murder».
Elatr plans to file a criminal and civil complaint against Saudi Arabia for Khashogi’s murder in a U.S. court despite the immunity that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman enjoys on U.S. soil as Saudi Prime Minister.
Despite this, in February 2021, a declassified report by the US Intelligence services concluded that the Saudi prince approved the assassination of Khashogi, in addition to linking another twenty people.
The other two cases will go against the United Arab Emirates, a country she accuses of having installed the Pegasus spyware on her cell phone when she was detained by intelligence agents of that country at the Dubai airport in April 2018, as well as the aforementioned Israeli company.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
