Transcripts For DW Conflict Zone 20240713

Still so many Unanswered Questions about the murder and why the massive crackdown on human rights activists inside saudi arabia. And the larger bare welcome to conflict so nice to be here its around 16 months since agents of your state to murder Jamal Khashoggi and cold blood in your consulate in istanbul whats striking in retrospect is that 3 days later your crown Prince Mohammed bin told the turkish authorities to search the consulate and added we have nothing to hide it remarkable statement because in fact the last 16 months have been full of aspects of this case that you have hidden right from the start and going on hiding the truth i dont believe so we have said that this was an old operation that it was not authorized we have investigated the people who were part of this operation charges were leveled against 11 of them 5 of them were facing the Death Penalty the trial began in january the trial was attended by representatives of the permanent 5 countries and on the Security Council plus 3 people would like to talk id like to talk about the trial but but but straight away after the event theres just take that expensive offer from the crown prince to such a concert was another. 10 days before turkish investigators were actually loud into the building why so long if you had nothing to hide i like the technical person but i understand that there are situations where countries have to agree on the mechanics and the modalities of how you want people to enter sovereign territory you have to agree on the equipment you have to agree on the scope and you have to agree no country would allow another country full access to a diplomatic facility that is doesnt happen the un special rapporteur this column or didnt see it that way she found credible evidence pointing to the crime scene as having been fairly even forensically clean these indicate she said the saudi investigation was not carried out in good faith and that it may amount to obstruct with a lot of the that was kind of i did not have a mandate for this she relied on sources from the newspapers and leaks to the media she did not she didnt have any experts in forensics and other issues but its a safe assumption isnt it you clean up the crime scene immediately youre hiding something up a safe assumption the issue with agnes kind of virus you vote to have report based on do some fords and then she. Before you can started look at her record when it comes to surgery before a number of years and how disparaging of her negatives she has been a good subject well a lot of people are disparaging these days about saudi arabia because were human rights record and i take this i take exception with this so grevious made great progress in terms of human rights requests could make great progress in terms of reform in terms of empowering women in terms of empowering youth in terms of ocean of society in terms of diversifying our economy in terms of reducing our reliance on oil 38 bit is moving very very quickly in a very positive direction under the guidance and direction of the camp and will come on to the details of that and i want to take you up on that but the list of Unanswered Questions about the murder itself is extensive isnt that we still dont know what happened to the remains of mr. How is that possible when you allegedly have all the criminals involved behind bars how do you know how do you not know they have said that they had a local collaborator. Who disposed of the body. I dont know i mean he didnt show interest game designers i am not the Public Prosecutor we do Foreign Policy we dont new criminal investigation as you have given behind has let it be king of the state telling you what we did and what we did is what every other country did the United States said in iraq but he not everybody us i am talking about the us committed outrageous crimes did the president authorized it and it was scrutiny of his the commander the same way your being scrutinized yes and what they did is they investigated they help people accountable they put in place mechanisms to prevent that from happening thats what governments who was this socalled cooperate so who knows what way the body i dont want to remain i dont know we dont have a history of murdering our citizens but if you are sorry as you claim to be over this incident why havent you found the this information is a matter of urgency and told with the question of his family because that would be a few men tarion gesture we have sent a number of legal documents to the turkish authorities asking for information and we have not received anything except one you havent told us either who you think masterminded this murder surely the trial must have shown up at all and so there was it was a mistake people exceeded their authorities and this happened the people who committed of a grade did not do it under the authority of the president or the Vice President or the secretary of defense the u. S. Government isnt buying your version of events is that the cia has let it be known in briefings that it has medium to high confidence that it was your crown prince mahmud been someone who ordered the killing we dont see it this way the president and the secretary of state have said this is not the case the largest Intelligence Agency in the world unmatched resources you tell me theyre talking nonsense i can only tell you what the us president whos the commander in chief of the u. S. Armed forces and what the secretary of state have said publicly. But if it was nonsense how do you explain the phone conversation intercepted by u. S. By agencies in 2017 in which the crown prince told a top aide hed use a bullet all because shoghi didnt stop his criticism i dont know anything about this and i cant comment about something that appears in newspapers based Anonymous Sources even if those Anonymous Sources are attributed to intelligence agencies the un acknowledges that its been an important step this trial towards accountability but says its failed to meet procedural and substantive standards so are being held the holy grail and those who are in the us so those of the report from the from the special rapporteur the special must on its biased special about or why because it is a little agree with exceeded her authority the special of what or says the trial was secret how can a trial be secret when we have representatives from the 5 permanent members of the Security Council plus turkey alqaeda trial was held behind closed doors the identity of those charged has not been released nor the identity of those facing the Death Penalty why the decision of opening up a trial or not rests with the judge and if the judge does not want to have a courtroom that looks like a circuit its his prerogative to close the trial now the representative from the other countries who are there have access to all the proceedings and they know the names of the people why should why were they told not to speak about it because we want to make sure that when the trial is over and charges are leveled the punishment is announced and people can see it you cannot accuse somebody who turns out to be innocent and then in the end they lose face society shall assume theyve been sentenced to death not all of them 5 of them have been so still one of them have been investigated and i believe 10 or 11 have been charged 5 have been sentenced to death why cant we know their names you look at the jurors the verdict on them because the trial is not over theres going to be an appeal and there and it has to be reviewed by the Supreme Court this is how awkward systems work. Lets deal with the final explanation that you and others in. This government would have us believe that it was some other rogue operation this team of high level operatives some of whom had in the past travelled with the crown prince decided they just had to go and kill was the question of the day they went out on a limb like that i believe they want to talk to him and they want to convince him to come back to her and he was something went terribly wrong and an altercation happened and he was murdered they went with an autopsy expert who had a bomb so now when i dont know about that i dont know about everybody else and i dont know where those are but he says i dont know about that the idea with that is that this was authorized is ridiculous this was a rogue operation that happened that should not have happened were going to be paying a great price for it its a terrible tragedy and the issue is we deal with it from legal perspective jim our family has come out and said we have confidence in the saudi judicial system there is a crime really thats most affected by the experts to say this that in saudi arabia but but but but your but your agents didnt bother to hide what they did didnt bother to disguise their actions at all one of them according to transcripts of their bug conversation was talking into a telephone immediately after the murder saying tell you was the thing is done its done its not always turns out this is not correct i dont believe the says correct i dont know this is this was from leaks i havent seen that the intercepts that the turks had but if turkey had all of this information why didnt they provided to the market should be before he went to the consulate if they believe this is the case if you are insisting that its a broke operation answer me one question why were the people who were involved that didnt sneak in by night and sneak out again they came in in private jets diplomatic passports checking into they left a trail everywhere they left a trail everywhere so by monitoring him. Assuming they werent authorized to do it they were signing their own death was what rogue thats what rogue operatives would do that thats why theyre facing a number of them are facing the Death Penalty and others are facing not and why why would they do that whats the motive for writing your own death sentence i dont know i think they went into talk to him they went in to try to convince him to come back something went terribly wrong and he was killed and they are being on trial now and a number of them are facing the death of actually is that they fully intended to kill him otherwise why do you take it all obviously youre having to go soon why do you have to assume the worst when it comes to saudi arabia operations gone wrong this is a pretty high has been to how good is assuming the worst here gray worst grave was pretty bad and they got a lot of bad publicity for it but we got to weed out some of the reverse side before then were dealing with it and were putting people on trial and we will be punishing them one of the key questions that keeps returning is whether the crown prince created an environment which allowed his agents to behave in the way they did in istanbul or you would tell me thats not true wouldnt you of course not the compass is a driving force behind change and sadly because the driving force behind empowering women and men and weve used his the driving force behind economic opening and economic reform and of increasing repression against those who dare think and act in an independent fashion i disagree with that he said driving force behind entertainment and recreation and hes a driving force behind technology and investments in technology and hes the driving force for setting surgery of up to be the leading country in the 21st century mr in march 27th in u. S. Officials with access to classified intelligence reports told the New York Times that your crown prince had authorized a secret campaign to silence dissenters that included surveillance kidnapping. Tension torture socalled Rapid Intervention team im not going to comment the news reports attributed to Anonymous Sources some came from saudi officials as well Anonymous Sources seems there was a Standing Order to saudi intelligence to bring dissidents phone animists sources i cannot comment on anonymous source or so about one of them who was brought home now off our shed a poet in 2018 he was on a trip to kuwait stopped at the airport forcibly returned to serbia arabia i dont have the details of this he was held incommunicado for 12 months no charge of anything i dont have the details on this case no saudi citizen is actually safe if they speak out against your government thats correct people come and see the king and his majesty the crown prince and his majesty communicate with them they tell them what they think they express criticism they provide ideas they provide suggestions this is what surgery b. Has been for centuries Amnesty International said last year the Saudi Arabian human rights defenders and independent voices male and female are behind bars serving lengthy sentences handed down by your Specialized Criminal Court most were prosecuted they said for their peaceful human rights work and calls for reforms i take issue with other countries on a major path to reform and anybody who calls for reform is part of that process why would we have reforms in saudi arabia and that could such people who call for reform there are other issues that people have been charged with and have been sentenced with and i believe that the reports that we get another very accurate really and so when you do and if you have any issue with the terms of the legal issues you should really address them to the Public Prosecution last year they also quoted a saudi lawyer i g. Who has represented many defendants before your Specialized Criminal Court he said on the record the presumption of innocence is not part of the Saudi Arabian judicial system pledging words and that i disagree with as has. And the presumption is always innocent until Proven Guilty when he says the opposite he has defended many people before you i thought unlike the positions of some of the ngos who assume that. Before without presuming that its innocent we are guilty before the case was over so everybody has missed everybody who reports this massive crackdown of the what massive crackdown on grip on the dissidents people we have the human Rights Groups the International Human Rights Groups that all wrong i will give any examples i will not i will give you an example and you tell me but the simple crecy in the 1990 s. We had radical preachers who were calling for jihad and. You just want to take us in our different direction you moved us from the story so allow me to finish i want to point out the folks in the 1990 s. We were criticized for having radical preachers and said we were preaching hate. When we detained them will criticise for taking away their freedom of speech its a damned if you do damned if you do situation if you dont situation do you want them to preach hate or do you want them to stop you cant have it both ways thats the park which is that mr raja back in march last year 36 countries you know this issued a joint statement expressing particular concern about your use of cold terror legislation against individuals peacefully exercising their rights and freedom 36 countries germany france u. K. Spain italy australia they also misjudge the situation in your country yet you seem to be badly misunderstood by some of the most expert biggest experts in the world yes they are really not about happened i doubt that they know so little that they shouldnt be need to be more educated we have been fighting terrorists as scarce as incredible is it i mean you can sit here and say that but thats insulting to their entirely she says have loss and there is a line between freedom of expression and incitement and murder and we have laws in our country we have a court system and people have to obey the laws and the courts and sundry but are the ones who do to keep these cases and nobody else was to push back to n. G. O. S and all the hidden by talk of stations and virtually every human rights activist is sitting in jail snottery. Why would they make it up do they make up things this honestly into nothing as if we believe that the what did they last may we are charged with detaining women for asking for the right to drive thats not true why would you detain somebody for asking for a rate that the king or party gets why would you because jews do those as you did because thats not the childishness you do they may not be the charge but thats the value of war isnt it no thats the wrong perception they were involved with foreign governments trying to recruit people in sensitive positions in court or to taint sensitive documents to be used by our enemies thats called espionage and the prosecution when the trials are over one percent the evidence you can call it what you libel you saying they were actually a threat to the saudis so it is seems to be yes that is the way that really thats what the prosecution is saying i dont have access to the courts i can only go by what the entity in saudi arabia that was filing charges and thats charged with prosecuting people in terms of trials and thats their position and they have been public about it last month mr jaber you address the European Parliament in brussels and you strongly objected to the scrutiny and criticism that has come your way from any peace if you object to that so much why sign up to International Agreements which involve other countries monitoring your compliance or do you just. Except it only when its in your favor to mean monitor compliance monitoring compliance with agreements youve saw and touches such as. Torture for instance we were youre supposed to have outlawed torture but there are millions of accusations that torture is practiced and they can bring the new artists they can bring the charges to a court and so people the court would review would a little be investigated you tell the parliament stop criticizing our causes we are a sovereign nation that refuses to be pattern yes member of the United Nations there we scrutiny we do not criticise other countries Legal Systems and we will not allow other countries to criticise our legal system if you dont want that kind of attention dont go abroad kidnapping your own people forcing them to go back to your country this is the legal system the Legal Process the belts of the state to do with a promise to search human the saudi arabia does not. Accept people criticizing our legal system we have not criticized the u. K. Or france or germany or sweden we are perfectly at liberty to we dont because you want to live this is your system we have not criticized how people in europe treat minorities or immigrants we have not criticized europe or a terrific past when it came to massive crimes against humanity we dont do this. And we will not accept criticism of our legal system by others but if you go on doing these things how can you expect your expensive Charm Offensive to call on anything but deaf ears all the money you paid for p. R. Companies expensive B R Companies in washington d. C. Where you were ambassador falls on deaf ears doesnt it we dont have an expensive Charm Offensive we have Public Relations Companies Like other countries too and the amounts are not outrageous to amounts of normal we present our case to people and we have people come and visit and we teach with people in dialogue for that they can see what side here is about we have seen Foreign Investment and such we have a go up we have seen foreign visitors so typical up we have seen foreign entrepreneurs come to south korea put a set up shop but we all are not buying your message im totally with you protecting human rights some telling you this is these are the facts. There is unanimity among the human rights organizations around the world but you are in the middle of a massive repression of women who disagree with that you know you can discuss what they think its their business we disagree with that our people our economy is doing well our country is attracting foreigners as a thing to do to your faith saudi arabia was so bad nobody would come why would Companies Invest go there are always going to do business who always come i was why you know that i would entrepreneurs come and set up shop and so because they can make money thats its nothing its nothing to do that you see when i disagree busy i think im doing i think your mind is made up and you dont want to see the facts come to said you can see so you talk you told the parliament stop lecturing and start working with us we have a court system the court system is and by that we dont allow anyone to question just what you just what you said to me how do you suggest europe works with you when you slam the door in its face like that. But in what sense land start lecturing and start with yes we will not accept lectures so lecture so that the church telling you the results a lecture based on you the results at their research is a lecture based on lack of information of the saudi legal system and how it works its a lecture based on information that they obtained either through hearsay or through inaccurate sources Government Agencies which once 36 countries that expressed their concern to you i thought id give you the details then there were other a large number of countries that offered a resolution counter to the us and those 36 countries were absolutely wrong well absolutely mistaken how could they get it so wrong theyve been going to your country for years talking to your people for years it beggars belief that you can put up this smoke screen and expect that viewpoint going to believe it and coming if you bear you can believe whatever you want but sad replacer country that some a path of reform broadening our economy we are diversifying our economy from oil will open it up into areas for investment where empowering nobody worries and violent you have to be one of the fraser government to lety we are creating opportunity for our young people 70 percent of scientists under the age of 7030. 00 they have hopes dreams and ambitions of the governments objective is to provide them with the ability to realize that you give us you keeps you keep saying this my question is why should you are work with a country that completely trashes its values and rights that are central to europes foundation because they believe that that assessment is wrong and then where would the starting point be i believe that that is wrong 60 years ago we didnt have schools for girls today 55 percent of women of College Students of them. 80 years ago Life Expectancy in surgery was 37 years old again i ask where where do you see it its really do you suffer today its in the in the mid seventys at the level of you where do you start when in the view of major countries around the world new human rights organizations you have so little respect for the sick human right i dont i dont buy those change their mind i dont buy that assessment you spoke at the parliament you told them your view theyre not buying it thats still not out of im not buying their view either major countries are not buying their view either so when they start theres no starting point if this is a look at if you look at education if you look at health care if you look at clay takes but were not really looking to do the human at all you can lose your identity as all human rights if you look at media where people who want to use health care to them if theyre in jail for years without charges have we have more than 20000000 saudis are they all in jail nobody said they were in jail youre telling me theyre all in jail i did i said human rights. Activists are in jail you see them and act as activists we dont does as i understand said hardly any of the we dont see it as like any of them are not behind bars with all due respect im still to national we have a court system we have the Public Prosecution to pop charts as against them the courts will adjudicate these cases and if they will listen to what people use and if they are guilty they were punished its a supposed that and with all due respect Amnesty International their opinion does they say that the trials are inherently unfair it does matter because it informs Public Opinion and Public Opinion around the world as you know i was not exactly trusting what goes on in saudi arabia do you think playboy to subside a human rights organizations who give Accurate Information about every country in the world or a state that has everything to lose if it admits to these human rights abuses i disagree with those who think this is going to believe i think that we have great relations with them with a large number of countries we have the presidency of the g. 20 would make a lot of Major Projects and sadly many would make a lot of reforms and so a great deal will improve in the standard of living of our people were becoming part of the global so what are you saying you dont care about what people think about your human rights say we dont have a problem with human rights we have a legal system we have laws that people have to behave if they dont obey those laws they will be charges filed against them and they would have to face the courts very simple in the United Kingdom the same thing would happen if somebody violates the law what do you do do i come to you and tell you this person was engaged in human rights when they killed somebody or when they spied for somebody or when they were not talking about you know its a kingdom you were talking you would like to talk about you know about every country except saudi arabia its not true im giving an example because i believe you have not been fair in your views of surgery and in the positions you are my views these are the views that didnt get in the extensively questions that youve articulated. And i wanted to be able to show you that this is this universal issue here when you have a law the last few buy it if you dont like law change it look as long as its on the books you have to pay it hold your book thank you very much for being. Able. To keep. Nice to me. Finally im not too dumb to playing games on the secrets of my making this. Place. Not down to play insisting on t. W. Small acts can inspire change the people making a small go out for some time sitting right place joined up as they set out to save the environment learn from one another and to Work Together for a Better Future for. Many causes to you all putting it down for. 90 minutes on d w like. Oh. My god says love food for the russian soul. At. The time. So many different walks of life some far flung back and ugly wind but all of that comes straight from the heart look for see it in whatever religion the march will. Come up. For most of the world to their final resting place the russians are d. W. Documentary. W. s crime fighters are back africas most successful radio drama series continues this season the stories focus on hate speech culture of prevention and sustainable chocolate production. All of us are those are Available Online and of course you can share and discuss on africas Facebook Page and other social media platforms. Crime fighters to mindanao. The global corona crisis you can find more Information Online at e. W. Dot com and on t. W. Social media channels. This is day w fly from hopeful signs in germanys fight against the coronavirus for the chancellor warns the nation to remain vigilant saying its still too early to consider easing restrictions on public life also on the Program Scientists in western germany study an area hit particularly hard by the corona virus and get something courage a results well hear about their discoveries in just a moment. Right across the virus pandemic poses and additional threat to endangered wildlife in kenya