RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—A Saudi court reduced the death sentences of five men convicted in the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi to 20-year prison terms and handed shorter sentences to three other nationals, in a case that drove a wedge between Saudi Arabia’s heir-apparent and the West.
The public prosecutor declared the case closed nearly two years after Mr. Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, undermining Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reputation among some of Saudi Arabia’s most important international partners and imperiling his economic reform program, despite his continued support from President Trump.
Those convicted had been expected to avoid execution after Mr. Khashoggi’s eldest son said in May his family had forgiven the killers, but the decision is unlikely to silence calls for accountability, including from influential members of Congress who have mulled a broad re-evaluation of the decades-old U.S.-Saudi alliance.
Prince Mohammed, the kingdom’s day-to-day ruler, has struggled to repair his battered image ahead of the summit of G-20 leaders, which Saudi Arabia is set to host in November. He hasn’t returned to the U.S. since the killing, following whirlwind visits to showcase his vision for Saudi Arabia and to pitch for investments.
Mr. Trump has stood by Prince Mohammed, despite the Central Intelligence Agency’s assessment that he likely ordered the killing. The prince has denied that, but said that as de facto leader he bears ultimate responsibility for Mr. Khashoggi’s death.
Agnes Callamard, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings who has called for Prince Mohammed and other senior officials to be investigated, said the final Saudi rulings lacked legal and moral legitimacy.
“They came at the end of a process which was neither fair, nor just, or transparent,” she said. “These verdicts cannot be allowed to whitewash what happened.”
The murder of Mr. Khashoggi, a well-known critic of the kingdom’s leadership who had fled fearing arrest and later wrote columns for the Washington Post, came amid a crackdown on critics of the crown prince. The clampdown has included the arrests of activists, intellectuals and clerics. It has coincided with Prince Mohammed’s campaign to ease some of the country’s conservative social rules, but the Saudi heir has shown little tolerance for dissent among ordinary Saudis or former top officials.
Mr. Khashoggi was killed and his body dismembered by Saudi agents during an October 2018 visit to the kingdom’s consulate where he was seeking papers needed to marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz.
“Everyone knows that Jamal Khashoggi’s real killers are not the eight who were convicted and imprisoned, but those who planned, decided and gave the orders to assassinate him in this hideous way,” Ms. Cengiz tweeted Monday following the public prosecutor’s statement.
The killing evoked an international outcry over Saudi Arabia’s human-rights record and slowed foreign investments in the kingdom. Supporters of Prince Mohammed contend it is time to move on from one of the most controversial chapters of Al Saud family rule.
In the murder, a team of Saudi operatives flew to Istanbul and dismembered Mr. Khashoggi’s body inside the consulate. Saudi officials initially denied any knowledge of the killing and claimed the journalist had left the building safely.
A secretive trial in Riyadh was meant to show Saudi Arabia’s ability to deliver accountability, but human-rights groups denounced it as a coverup.
Eleven people were put on trial, but three were later released, including former deputy intelligence chief Ahmed al-Assiri, who is close to Prince Mohammed. Saud al-Qahtani, top royal adviser, was never charged or tried. He was fired from his position in the Saudi Royal Court following the killing but continued to play an informal advisory role, U.S. officials have said.
Saudi authorities have never publicly named those who were tried and convicted in the killing. People familiar with the proceedings have said they are low-level officials, some with ties to Prince Mohammed, who flew into Turkey for the operation. Mr. Qahtani and the five men initially sentenced to death were among those sanctioned by the U.S. for their alleged roles in the killing.
The Khashoggi family’s pardon, seen by the crown prince’s critics as made under duress, paved the way for the sentence reductions. Following the killing, each of Mr. Khashoggi’s four children received a house in Jeddah and monthly payments as compensation on orders of the king, people familiar with the matter said.
In July, a Turkish court opened a separate trial in absentia of 20 Saudi nationals, including Messrs Qahtani and Assiri, on charges including torture and deliberate murder.
Write to Stephen Kalin at stephen.kalin@wsj.com
Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8