Saudi Arabia has issued "final verdicts" against eight suspects in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018 -- sentencing five of the defendants to 20 years in prison.
One defendant was handed a sentence of 10 years and the two others face seven years in prison, SPA reported on Monday.
The verdicts come after Khashoggi's family "pardoned" five of the suspects in May, thereby sparing them the death penalty, CNN previously reported.
Agnes Callamard, the UN Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Killings who lead an independent investigation into the murder, called the verdicts a "parody of justice" on Monday.
"The Saudi Prosecutor performed one more act today in this parody of justice. But these verdicts carry no legal or moral legitimacy. They came at the end of a process which was neither fair, nor just, or transparent," Callamard wrote on Twitter.
"The 5 hit men are sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, but the high-level officials who organized and embraced the execution of Jamal Khashoggi have walked free from the start -- barely touched by the investigation and trial," she added.
Khashoggi, 59, was killed and dismembered at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, in a case that tarnished the reputation of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
According to Turkish officials, Khashoggi, a critic of Prince Mohammed, was strangled and his body cut into pieces by a 15-man Saudi squad inside the consulate. His remains have not been found.
Riyadh has described the murder as a “rogue” operation, but both the CIA and a UN special envoy have directly linked Prince Mohammed to the killing, a charge the kingdom vehemently denies.
Khashoggi’s fiance on Monday branded the Saudi court ruling a “farce”.
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