The widow of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was murdered in 2018, has been granted political asylum in the U.S., according to The Washington Post.
“Thank you to @RepDonBeyer @timkaine @danapriest @washingtonpost for your powerful help in getting me political asylum and telling the truth. Not done yet in getting #JusticeforJamal @JKhashoggi,” Hanan Elatr said in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday.
Elatr included a link in the post to an article from the Washington Post, where her husband previously worked, about her newfound asylum. According to the Post, the decision on her asylum came this month.
“I couldn’t really believe it,” Elatr said in the wake of reading a letter on the decision, per the Post. “I said, ‘Is this real?’ I couldn’t digest it.”
Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government, was murdered while in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
In an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier in September, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that “anyone involved” in Khashoggi’s murder is “serving jail time.” This comment stood in contrast to a U.S. intelligence report that found Salman behind the approval and likely the ordering of the journalist’s death.
Baier asked the crown prince about what he would tell U.S. tourists or journalists with safety concerns about visiting Saudi Arabia, to which he responded “Well, we take all the legal measurements that any country took, like when America have mistakes in Iraq, they do investigation, trial, etc.”
“We did that in Saudi Arabia and the case being closed,” he continued. “And also, we try to reform the security system to be sure these kinds of mistakes doesn’t happen again. And we can see in the past five years, nothing of those things happened.”