Do you know who Jamal Khashoggi is?  Imagine a journalist entering the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey one fateful day last October never to be seen again.

People gathered in Istanbul recently to remember Khashoggi who was brutally murdered one year ago, his body allegedly hacked into pieces and disposed of. 

Well-known people such as Jeff Bezos attended Khashoggi’s vigil and even gave a speech to show his condolences. 

He directed his speech towards Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz. “No one should ever have to endure what you did. It is unimaginable and you need to know that you are in our hearts. We are here and you are not alone.”

On October 2nd of 2018, Khashoggi and his fiance decided to get a marriage certificate from the consulate. Cengiz paced the streets as she waited for Khashoggi to return from the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul with the papers, but he never returned to her. It later emerged that he had been killed and dismembered that same day by a Saudi assassination squad.

 It was later believed that the Crown Prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, was the culprit behind the assassination and the one who made the call for his death. Khashoggi was a huge critic of the Crown Prince and would often expose the Prince and things he was doing that should not be allowed. 

In an interview with 60 minutes that aired on September 29th, Salman said he took “full responsibility” of the murder of Khashoggi but denied calling for the assassination to take place. He said it was a “mistake” and an “awful accident”. President Trump also refuses to blame the Prince for Khashoggi’s death. 

The debate on Khashoggi’s death still continues one year later. Many journalists believe something should be done to protect them in order to prevent any future assassinations of journalists. In 2018 alone, 43 journalists were killed for their work.

“Khashoggi’s death and the failure of either the United States government or the government of Saudi Arabia to further investigate that death is beyond belief,” said Donna Del Moro, journalism teacher at WHHS.  “The fate of journalists rests in the hands of the very governments they attempt to expose for corruption or misconduct and that is not acceptable.”

Since Khashoggi’s death, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has been urging the United States government and the United Nations to give justice to Khashoggi.  The CPJ pushed to force the administration of President Donald J. Trump to disclose documents about any threats Khashoggi maybe have received that the intelligence community knew about before his death and if there were any warnings given to him.