For Jamal Khashoggi’s Widow, his Brutal Murder was Just the Start of her Nightmare

Hanan El Atr Khashoggi’s engagement to Jamal Khashoggi in April 2018 was a day of celebration and joy, but also the start of a nightmare that would involve murder, global espionage, and a years-long fight for justice that has yet to be resolved.

“I don’t have a life anymore,” Hanan told Adrian Goldberg on the latest Byline Times Podcast, out now. “It destroyed my whole life.”

Jamal Khashoggi was 59 when he walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 to obtain some documents.

He never walked out.

For more than two weeks, Saudi officials denied all knowledge of what had happened to Khashoggi, insisting he had left the building “after a few minutes or one hour”.

This narrative would soon change, but rather than a definitive answer, several conflicting stories would emerge. 

Saudi officials said he was killed in a “rogue operation” by agents tasked with returning him to his home country.

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Turkish officials said the same agents had acted on orders from the highest levels of the Saudi government, and had killed him almost as soon as he entered the building, before dismembering and destroying his body.

His remains have never been found.

As well as Turkey, the CIA, the US director of national intelligence, and the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions have all concluded that Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) sanctioned the murder.

Saudi Arabia has always denied MBS ordered or even knew about the killing.

In an article for the Washington Post on 2 November 2018, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Khashoggi “was killed in cold blood by a death squad” adding his murder was “premeditated”.

“Where is Khashoggi’s body? Who is the ‘local collaborator’ to whom Saudi officials claimed to have handed over Khashoggi’s remains? Who gave the order to kill this kind soul? Unfortunately, the Saudi authorities have refused to answer those questions”.

While these questions were being asked on the international stage, Hanan was going through her own personal, and escalating hell.

Hanan’s troubles began in the months leading up to Khashoggi’s murder.

Khashoggi had been living in self-imposed exile in the US since 2017, after his criticism of President Donald Trump angered the Saudi authorities. 

“So the context going back to 2016, if you remember, was that nobody in the world nor in the United States thought that Donald Trump was going to win [the US presidential election]”, Hanan’s lawyer Randa Fahmy said.

“So in 2016, when Donald Trump went and won the presidential election, every Middle Eastern leader tried to get into his good graces, including the Saudis who didn’t know him at the time”.

Fahmy said that Khashoggi gave a speech to a Washington think tank in December 2016 during which he described Trump as “too right-wing” and said he would not make a good leader.

Still living in Saudi Arabia at the time of the speech, he was banned from writing in newspapers and appearing on TV, prompting his decision to leave for the US.

From there, in regular columns for the Washington Post, he took aim at the Saudi authorities, comparing MBS to Russian President Vladimir Putin and, in his last column in September 2018, describing Saudi Arabia as “unbearable”.

During this time, in April 2018, Hanan and Khashoggi got engaged and married two months later, immediately putting her on the radar of not only Saudi Arabia, but also its close ally, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Born in Egypt, and growing up in Dubai, Hanan worked as cabin crew for Emirates airline for 22 years, and her work regularly meant she was in the UAE.

“[UAE authorities] detained me in the third week of April 2018, putting me under house arrest for 15 days, confiscating my passport, torturing me and harassing me”, Hanan claims.

“And this harassment and threats from the intelligence [services} of the UAE continued until I fled”.

Hanan says that in 2019, she was even pressured to give an interview with a Saudi-owned news channel and exonerate the Saudi state for the murder of Khashoggi.

“I refused”, she said.

In July 2020, Hanan made it to the US and claimed political asylum, but her troubles were far from over.

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Hanan had to prove she was married which required producing her marriage certificate, but Fahmy said the imam who conducted the ceremony “withheld it for a variety of personal and political reasons”.

“So we had to actually take him to court”, Fahmy said. “And we were able to, after two long years of litigation, secure that certificate, certainly not willingly, but we did settle the case five days before we were going to court”.

As if this wasn’t enough, in 2021 Hanan discovered that she may have unwittingly assisted her husband’s killers carry out the killing.

An investigation by the Washington Post and Canadian research firm Citizen Lab, found Hanan’s phone was one of those affected by the Pegasus spyware scandal

“And so Hanan’s devices, unfortunately, may have been how they tracked Jamal’s whereabouts”, Fahmy said.

Asked how this feels, Hanan replies: “It’s hurting me a lot”.

Despite years of torment, Hanan, with the help of Fahmy, is still pursuing justice.

“They destroyed my life”, Hanan said. “My family has been divided [across] Arab countries and some of them stay at home as a punishment, not working, and I’m supporting them financially with my little income. 

“And I did not get any apology or compensation”.

Find out more about Hanan’s story and her continuing effort to get justice in the Byline Podcast.