Khashoggi’s children appeal for his body

The sons of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi have issued an appeal for the return of their father’s body, saying that they want to return to Saudi Arabia to bury him.Salah, 35, and Abdullah, 33, broke their silence a month after their father disappeared at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, in an interview with CNN on Sunday, describing how difficult the last few weeks had been for the family, and paying tribute to a man they called “courageous, generous and very brave”.In the interview, Salah and Abdullah said that without their father’s body, their family is unable to grieve and deal with the emotional burden of their father’s death.“It’s not a normal situation, it’s not a normal death at all. What we want right now is to bury him in Al Baqi (cemetery) in Madinah (Saudi Arabia), with the rest of his family,” Salah said. “I talked about that with the Saudi authorities and I just hope that it happens soon.”“I really hope that whatever happened wasn’t painful for him, or it was quick. Or he had a peaceful death,” Abdullah told CNN.Salah, who was believed to have been subject to a travel ban preventing him from leaving the kingdom, flew to Washington, DC with Abdullah, their two sisters and respective families two weeks ago, just after he was pictured shaking hands with Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman after being summoned to one of Riyadh’s royal palaces.Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who was critical of the Saudi Arabian government and its de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohamed, was killed after he entered the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2.The Saudi authorities have admitted that Khashoggi was murdered in a premeditated action, revising previous statements that his death was unintended.Turkish officials and some US lawmakers have said that Crown Prince Mohamed ordered the murder, an allegation that Riyadh denies.Khashoggi’s body has not been recovered, and the Saudi authorities are conducting an official investigation.On October 24, Salah met in Riyadh with the crown prince and King Salman to receive condolences along with other Khashoggi family members.Salah left for the United States a day later, and his CNN interview was his first public comments since then.He said that King Salman assured him that those involved in Khashoggi’s murder would be brought to justice.“We just need to make sure that he rests in peace,” Salah said of his father.“Until now, I still can’t believe that he’s dead. It’s not sinking in with me emotionally,” he said, adding that there has been a lot of “misinformation” about the circumstances of the death.Salah said charges that his father was a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood organisation were not true.“It’s just labels and people not doing their homework properly, and reading his article and going in depth. It’s easier to stick a label on him,” Abdullah added.Asked how Khashoggi should be remembered, Salah replied: “As a moderate man who has common values with everyone ... a man who loved his country, who believed so much in it and its potential.”“Jamal was never a dissident. He believed in the monarchy, that it is the thing that is keeping the country together. And he believed in the transformation that it is going through.”It is alleged that the powerful heir to the Saudi throne must have, at a minimum, been aware of the plan to kill Khashoggi, who had become increasingly critical of the Saudi royal family since moving to the US in self-imposed exile in 2017.When asked about his meeting with Crown Prince Mohamed, which was widely criticised as a royal attempt at damage control, Salah said that the visit had been “over-analysed”.The family is waiting for the results of the investigation into their father’s killing to emerge and trusts King Salman to bring the perpetrators to justice, he added.Reflecting on their father’s career as a journalist, they said that Khashoggi was “like a rock and roll star” when they were out with him in Saudi Arabia.“He was a public figure who was liked by everyone else,” Salah said. “You don’t see that much in media, in print media.”Salah, the eldest sibling, has been made the principal family point of contact by the Saudi government, meaning that all of Khashoggi’s relatives call him.He says he relies on news reports for updates about the investigation into his father’s death.“Our source is the same source that you have. It is a mystery. This is putting a lot of burden on us – all of us. That everybody is seeking for information just as we do. They think that we have answers, and unfortunately we don’t,” Salah said.Abdullah says that he was the last of Khashoggi’s children to see him alive.When he heard the journalist was going to be in Turkey, he went to visit him and spent time with him and his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz.“He was happy. It was a very good opportunity for me to see him. We hung out in Istanbul, we had fun,” Abdullah recalled. “I was really lucky to have last moment with him. I feel very grateful.”Following the murder, Abdullah was the first family member to visit Khashoggi’s apartment in Virginia.There, he said, he found that his father had placed a photograph of his grandchildren, Abdullah’s two children and Salah’s daughter, by his bed.