One month ahead of US President Joe Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia, the District of Columbia (DC) is renaming the street in front of the Saudi Arabian embassy Jamal Khashoggi Way, trolling Riyadh for its role in the killing of the dissident Saudi Arabian activist and journalist in 2018.
With members of the Council of the District of Columbia in attendance, a Jamal Khashoggi Way sign was unveiled directly in front of the embassy’s main entrance.
“We intend to remind the people who are hiding behind these doors ... that we hold them responsible and we will hold them accountable for the murder of our friend,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN, the pro-Arab world democracy organization founded by Khashoggi prior to his death.
Photo: AP
Whitson also criticized what she called the “shameless capitulation” of the Biden administration for seeking improved relations with the Saudi Arabian government and scheduling an official presidential visit to the kingdom.
Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi Arabian journalist and Washington Post columnist, entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Oct. 2, 2018, seeking the necessary documentation for a planned marriage with his fiancee waiting outside for him. The 59-year-old never emerged.
The Saudi Arabian government initially denied any wrongdoing, but under mounting international pressure, Riyadh eventually admitted that Khashoggi had been killed inside the consulate in what it characterized as a repatriation effort gone wrong. The CIA later released a report concluding that Khashoggi was killed and dismembered on the orders of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.
The Saudi Arabian regime has consistently denied that connection. Several lower-level Saudi Arabian officials and agents received jail sentences over the killing.
The DC Council late last year unanimously voted to rename a one-block stretch for Khashoggi.
“I’m very proud that we did this,” DC Council Chair Phil Mendelson said. “The Saudi government cannot forget what happend, what it did. This is a constant reminder.”
The renaming is ceremonial, as signified by the brown street sign instead of the usual green, and it will not impact the embassy’s mailing address. However, the sign will remain indefinitely. An e-mail to the Saudi Arabian embassy seeking comment did not receive a response.
Khashoggi’s Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, could not attend the ceremony, but a statement from her was read aloud. In it, she bitterly criticized the Biden administration for “putting oil over principles and expediency over principles.”
Cengiz also directly requested of Biden, when he meets with the crown prince: “Can you at least ask: ‘Where is Jamal’s body?”’
White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre would not say whether Biden would raise the issue of Khashoggi’s murder when he meets with the crown prince next month.
“The president is a straight shooter. This is not something that he’s afraid to talk about,” she said.
However, she did not confirm if the killing would be a topic of conversation.
An uncrewed Chinese spacecraft has acquired imagery data covering all of Mars, including visuals of its south pole, after circling the planet more than 1,300 times since early last year, state media reported yesterday. The Tianwen-1 successfully reached the Red Planet in February last year on the country’s inaugural mission there. A robotic rover has since been deployed on the surface as an orbiter surveyed the planet from space. Among the images taken from space were China’s first photographs of the Martian south pole, where almost all of the planet’s water resources are locked. In 2018, an orbiting probe operated by the European
QUARANTINE SHORTENED: A new protocol detailing risk levels and local policy responses would be ‘more scientific and accurate,’ a health agency spokesman said China’s revised COVID-19 guidelines, which cut a quarantine requirement in half for inbound travelers, also create a standardized policy for mass testing and lockdowns when cases of the disease flare, showing that the country still has a zero-tolerance approach to the virus. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) solidified the position during a trip to Wuhan, where the pathogen first emerged in 2019, saying that China is capable of achieving a “final victory” over the virus. The “zero COVID-19” policy is the most effective and economic approach for the country, Xi said during the trip on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency reported. The first
A flight test of a hypersonic missile system in Hawaii on Wednesday ended in failure due to a problem that occurred after ignition, the US Department of Defense said, delivering a fresh blow to a program that has experienced stumbles. It did not provide details of what took place in the test, but said in an e-mailed statement that “the department remains confident that it is on track to field offensive and defensive hypersonic capabilities on target dates beginning in the early 2020s.” “An anomaly occurred following ignition of the test asset,” Pentagon spokesman US Navy Lieutenant Commander Tim Gorman said in
China is racing to quash a new COVID-19 flareup that risks spilling over into one of its most economically significant regions, raising the specter of disruptions that could roil global supply chains for solar panels, medicines and semiconductors. Infections have surged in Si County in the eastern province of Anhui, with officials reporting 287 cases for Sunday and nearly 1,000 since late last week. Authorities locked down Si and a neighboring county late last week to try and stop the virus from spreading to Jiangsu Province, the second-biggest contributor to China’s economic output and a globally important manufacturing hub for the
RSS