RIYADH – A Saudi official today denied he threatened United Nations investigator Agnes Callamard following her probe into journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s 2018 murder, after the UN confirmed she was issued a death threat.
At a meeting with UN officials in Geneva in January last year, a senior Saudi official threatened twice to have Callamard “taken care of” if she is not restrained by the UN, the Guardian newspaper reported this week.
Without naming the Saudi official, Callamard – UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions – told the British newspaper that the comment was perceived by her Geneva-based colleagues as a “death threat”.
Saudi Arabia’s Human Rights Commission head Awwad Alawwad today said Callamard and UN officials believed he had made the threat.
“I reject this suggestion in the strongest terms,” Alawwad, who is the kingdom’s former media minister, wrote on Twitter.
“While I cannot recall the exact conversations, I never would have desired or threatened any harm upon a UN-appointed individual, or anyone for that matter.
“I am disheartened that anything I have said could be interpreted as a threat.”
There is no immediate comment from Callamard.
UN Human Rights Office in Geneva spokesman Rupert Colville confirmed that “the details in the Guardian story about the threat aimed at Agnes Callamard are accurate”.
The UN body had informed Callamard about the threat, he added.
Khashoggi, a Saudi insider-turned-critic who wrote for The Washington Post, was killed and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
The gruesome murder by Saudi agents tarnished the reputation of de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and plunged the kingdom into its biggest diplomatic crisis in years.
Callamard’s report, published in June 2019, concluded that there is “credible evidence” that top Saudi officials, including the crown prince, are liable for the killing.
Late last month, Washington released a long-delayed intelligence report that accused Mohammed of approving Khashoggi’s murder. The report drew a rebuke from Riyadh, which insists he was killed in a “rogue operation” by a Saudi hit squad.
But Washington stopped short of sanctioning the crown prince.
Callamard called US inaction against Mohammed “extremely worrisome”.
“It is extremely, in my view, problematic, if not dangerous, to acknowledge someone’s culpability and then to tell that someone that we won’t do anything.”
Earlier this month, Reporters Without Borders said it had asked a German court to investigate “crimes against humanity” by Mohammed over the killing.
The criminal suit, which seeks an inquiry by prosecutors under Germany’s international jurisdiction laws, alleges systematic persecution of Khashoggi and other Saudi journalists. – AFP, March 25, 2021
