Want the best from VICE News in your inbox? Sign up here.
The children of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi have received multimillion-dollar mansions and massive monthly stipends from the government of Saudi Arabia in return for their silence over their father’s gruesome murder, according to a bombshell report in the Washington Post.
Videos by VICE
The paper reports that all four of Khashoggi’s children have received new homes in the Saudi port city of Jeddah, worth up to $4 million each. The granting of the properties is accompanied by payments of up to $10,000 per month to Khashoggi’s two sons, Salah and Abdullah, and two daughters, Noha and Razan.
Only Salah resides in the home given to the siblings by the Kingdom, the report says. The other three, who live in the U.S., plan on selling their homes.
The homes and payments were approved by King Salman last year in acknowledgment that “a big injustice has been done” and an attempt “to make a wrong right,” one official told the Post.
The siblings could be in line for an even bigger payout in the coming months when the trials of those accused of killing their father conclude. Under Saudi law, the siblings can grant their father’s killers clemency in return for “blood money” payments that could be worth tens of millions of dollars. It is unclear if the family would have to forgive or absolve the killers to collect the payments, the report says.
The negotiations, which have been led by Khalid bin Salman, the brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, are part of Riyadh’s efforts to ensure the siblings remain restrained in their public statements about their father’s killings.
The four children have so far refrained from criticizing the crown prince — who U.S. intelligence agencies say likely ordered Khashoggi’s killing — and have said little publicly about their father’s death.
Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post, is believed to have been tortured and then killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October of last year. His body has never been recovered, as it was likely dismembered by a group of Saudi assassins who traveled to Turkey to conduct the killing.
The six-month anniversary of Khashoggi’s death has brought renewed calls for the White House — and President Trump, in particular — to do more to hold the Saudi regime to account.
Despite the findings of the CIA regarding the Crown Prince’s involvement, Trump has avoided criticism and said instead, “Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.”
“In this impotent response, Trump isn’t just violating the law. He is also undermining the credibility and moral authority of the United States,” Fred Ryan, publisher and chief executive of the Washington Post, wrote in an op-ed on Monday.
Cover: Jamal Khashoggi speaks during a press conference in Manama, Bahrain on Dec. 15, 2014. (AP Photo/Hasan Jamali, File)
