Hundreds offer funeral prayer for Khashoggi in London

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

LONDON

Hundreds of Muslims filled a north London mosque to attend a funeral prayer in absentia for slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Friday.

The funeral prayer, organized by the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), was offered following the Friday prayer at the call from Khashoggi’s fiancee Hatice Cengiz.

“Jamal Khashoggi’s heinous and beastly murder was nothing less than a state-sponsored elimination of opposition and dissent, and the entire free world should unite in calling this out,” the MAB said in a statement.

Saeed Naser Al-Ghamidi, a Saudi academic and friend of Khashoggi who led the prayer, told the congregation that the killers of Khashoggi have committed multiple crimes including murder, treachery, mutilation and lying.

Anas Altikriti, the president of MAB, told Anadolu Agency they decided to respond to the call from Khashoggi’s fiancee and that is why they invited Muslims to Finsbury Park mosque.

Altikriti said the U.K. government and all major governments around the world should really look at themselves in terms of “their dealings with Saudi Arabia and all regimes that are oppressive.”

“We can’t continue to supply these regimes with arms, weapons, technology in order to continue suppress and subjugate their dissidents,” he added.

He said Khashoggi “stood for freedom of the word, ideas, thoughts, democracy and change and for that he gave his life.”

Osama Gaweesh, a journalist and activist, said people who were concerned about Khashoggi’s death filled the mosques today not only in London but also in Medina and Istanbul.

Khashoggi, a frequent contributor to The Washington Post, was killed Oct. 2 inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

After weeks of denying any involvement in the crime, Saudi Arabia later admitted that Khashoggi had been killed inside the consulate but claimed the Saudi royal family had no prior knowledge of any plot to murder the journalist.

His body has yet to be returned to his family, which has been requesting its return, amid reports that it was chemically dissolved.