WASHINGTON (MEMO) – The fiancée of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Hatice Cengiz, has slammed U.S. President Joe Biden over his plan to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who according to U.S. intelligence authorized the killing in 2018.
“Mr. Biden, you’ll soon visit Saudi Arabia as president, where you’ll meet with Jamal’s heartless executer (sic), dishonoring yourself and Jamal by meeting MBS,” said Hatice Cengiz in a video message posted by Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a non-profit Khashoggi founded in 2018.
“Mr. President, I beseech you not to lose your moral authority or overlook this heinous crime,” Cengiz said in the message on Thursday. “You must uphold your role to bring all the perpetrators of this brutal crime to justice.”
“Like me, you intimately know grief, pain and sorrow,” Cengiz continued, invoking the 1972 car accident that killed Biden’s first wife and infant daughter. “You understand how it is very, very difficult to recover … But unlike your losses, the person I loved was brutally murdered, and I’m being forced to live in a world where his murderers have not only been unpunished, but also been rewarded.”
“As disappointing as this is,” Cengiz went on, “if you have to put oil over principles, and expediency over values, can you at least ask, ‘Where is Jamal’s body? Doesn’t he deserve a proper burial? And what happened to his killers?’”
Biden is expected to visit Saudi Arabia and the Israeli-occupied territories in the middle of next month. Officials have said that the trip will take place between the 14-15 July but the date could shift. The trip marks a major U-turn in Biden’s foreign policy.

Street Named After Khashoggi

On Wednesday, a day after it was confirmed that Biden would be heading to the kingdom next month, activists, lawmakers and rights groups gathered for a ceremony in Washington DC that saw the street in front of the Saudi embassy renamed “Jamal Khashoggi Way” - a lasting sign to Riyadh, said those gathered, that the city would never forget Khashoggi’s killing, no matter the politics of who sits in the White House.
More than 100 people gathered in front of the embassy for the ceremony, where they held aloft photos of the slain journalist as security guards staffed the entrance to the building.
“Someone somewhere, perhaps today, is going to Google the Saudi embassy and see the name of the street on which it is located: Jamal Khashoggi Way. And that matters. Every little bit of accountability matters,” Michael De Dora, Washington advocacy manager for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said during the ceremony.