Saudi Arabia‘s secretive hearings for 11 suspects accused in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi fall short of international standards and should be open to the public and trial observers, a United Nations human rights expert has said. 

Agnes Callamard who leads an international inquiry into the killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last October, called on the kingdom to reveal the defendants’ names and the fate of 10 others initially arrested.

“The Government of Saudi Arabia is grievously mistaken if it believes that these proceedings, as currently constituted, will satisfy the international community, either in terms of procedural fairness under international standards or in terms of the validity of their conclusions,” Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, said in a statement on Thursday. 

The Saudi public prosecutor indicted 11 unnamed suspects in November, including five who could face the death penalty on charges of ordering and committing the crime.

The CIA has reportedly concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing, which officials in Riyadh deny.

Saud al-Qahtani, a top aide to Prince Mohammed fired over the killing, is not among the 11 suspects on trial at secretive hearings in Riyadh despite Saudi pledges to bring those responsible to justice, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters news agency on Sunday.

Callamard, referring to diplomats from world powers on the UN Security Council who have attended some of the four hearings thus far, warned: “They risk being participants in a potential miscarriage of justice, possibly complicit should it be shown that the trials are marred by violations of human rights law”. 

‘Abysmal record’ 

Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist who was living in the United States, was killed on October 2, 2018 at the consulate where he had gone to collect documents for his planned wedding.

A critic of the Saudi government and the crown prince, Khashoggi had resisted pressure from Riyadh for him to return home.

His body is yet to be found.

Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, played down any expectations that an open trial would actually take place.

“An open, serious trial, rather than a show trial, would definitely lead to some of those who are truly responsible for the crime,” he said.

“And as we’ve heard from so many … including CIA directors and various Western intelligence agencies and others, that this couldn’t have been done without the clear involvement of the crown prince – and I can’t see the crown prince being called as a witness,” Bishara added.

“At the end of the day, Saudi Arabia is going to have to continue to make this as a show trial in order to gain some sort of good PR.”

Louis Charbonneau, UN director at Human Rights Watch, said the Saudi criminal justice system has “an abysmal record”, marked by defendants being held for long periods without charge or trial and often denied lawyers.

Charbonneau added that Saudi authorities should open the Khashoggi murder trial to UN observers, international activists and media, and countries whose diplomats observe the trial should speak out publicly.

“We can’t enable the Saudi government to turn it into a kangaroo court that conveniently finds a bunch of people guilty while whitewashing the possible responsibility of top Saudi officials,” he said.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has meanwhile told a congressional hearing that Washington is still working “all across the government” to identify and hold accountable anyone responsible for Khashoggi’s murder.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has denounced Australia‘s far-right One Nation party after Al Jazeera aired secretly filmed footage in which its leader suggested that the country’s worst mass shooting was a conspiracy.

Morrison on Thursday called Senator Pauline Hanson’s comments “appalling” and said his ruling Liberal Party would advise voters, on his recommendation, to rank One Nation below the opposition Labor Party on voting cards in an upcoming federal election, set to take place in May.

The prime minister, whose conservative party has been courting One Nation supporters, said his decision on preference rankings was based on his “strong view about the sanctity of Australia’s gun laws”.

Al Jazeera’s investigation, titled How to sell a massacre, shows Hanson claiming the 1996 mass shooting in the Tasmanian town of Port Arthur, which left 35 people dead, was carried out to change Australian gun laws.

“An MP said it would actually take a massacre in Tasmania to change the gun laws in Australia,” she told Al Jazeera’s undercover journalist, Rodger Muller, who was posing as a gun rights campaigner.

“Those shots, they were precision shots. I’ve read a lot, and I’ve read the book on it – Port Arthur. A lot of questions there,” she said.

Morrison said he was “shocked” by Hanson’s comments.

He added: “These gun laws have kept Australia safe for 20 years and have led the world. They are one of the Liberal Party’s proudest achievements.”

‘Stupid, inappropriate’

Later on Thursday, Hanson, who made global headlines in 2017 after wearing a burqa to the Australian parliament to protest against Muslim immigration, called Al Jazeera’s investigation a “political attack” and a “ploy to destroy One Nation heading into the election”.

She told reporters in Brisbane that her comments had been “completely taken out of context” and “heavily edited”.

The senator also defended two One Nation officials – James Ashby and Peter Dickson – who were filmed by Muller seeking up to $20m in political funding from powerful gun lobby groups in the United States while offering to weaken Australia’s strict firearms legislation.

In a meeting with the US’s National Rifle Association in Washington, DC, Dickson, a candidate in the federal election, liked Australian restrictions on guns as “poison” and vowed to “kill” them.

Ashby, in conversations with Muller, proposed a gradual approach to relaxing Australia’s gun laws, saying: “It’s like Vegemite. You don’t put a f***ing bundle of the s*** on the toast. A light smear first. Get them used to the flavour.”

He also told Muller, ahead of a meeting with the energy giant Koch Industries, that he wanted to obtain up to $20m from the group. There is no evidence the One Nation was successful in obtaining the money.

In her comments on Thursday, Hanson said One Nation would “never” accept foreign donation.

Flanked by Ashby and Dickson, she said the pair had made “stupid” and “inappropriate remarks”, but Ashby would retain his post as One Nation’s chief of staff and Dickson would remain on the party’s Queensland Senate ticket in the upcoming poll.

She went on to brand Morrison a “fool” for the move against One Nation, saying he had handed election victory to the centre-left parties.

Afghanistan will remain dependent on foreign donors and international help even after a peace deal with the Taliban is reached, a watchdog in the United States has said, adding that that prospect of a potential end to fighting raises its own risks to rebuilding efforts.

The comments on Thursday by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, which monitors billions of dollars in US aid to the country, came in a new report identifying main high-risk areas for Afghanistan.

“A peace agreement would be welcomed by the long-suffering Afghan people,” John Sopko, the head of SIGAR, said in Washington, DC.

“But it could bring its own challenges to sustaining what the United States, coalition partners and the Afghan government have achieved.”

Reintegration of Taliban

Washington’s nearly two-decade involvement in Afghanistan is the longest war in US history, with tens of thousands of civilians killed since 2001.

In recent months, US and Taliban officials have held several rounds of peace talks, raising hopes for an end to the long-running war.

The latest ended earlier this month in Qatar’s capital, Doha, with both sides citing progress.

If a peace deal is struck, SIGAR said a concern would be the reintegration of as many as 60,000 heavily armed Taliban fighters and their families back into Afghan society.

The report said other points of concern include widespread insecurity, underdeveloped civil policing capability, endemic corruption, sluggish economy, a burgeoning illicit opium trade and threats to women’s rights.

More of the US reconstruction effort has gone into the Afghan National Army than to its national police, and a strategy for a “competent” police force, sustained by foreign assistance, would also be required, SIGAR wrote. Corruption has hampered reconstruction and remains the “top strategic threat” to the government’s legitimacy, it said.

US-led forces deposed the Taliban in 2001 after the September 11, 2011 attacks in the US but the fighters regrouped and have steadily extended their influence.

A study last year by the Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs said some 38,480 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan due to the so-called “war on terror” launched by the US.

Donor countries are expected to finance approximately 51 percent of Afghanistan’s 2019 government spending of $5bn. Yet the Afghan government’s capabilities are generally weak and it often lacks the capacity to manage and account for donor funds, the report said.

The US has spent $132bn since 2002 on training Afghan forces, strengthening institutions and other initiatives.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced his eagerness to end his country’s involvement in Afghanistan, where 14,000 US troops are still deployed.

Afghanistan has been enmeshed in nearly constant conflict since the Soviet invasion of 1979, which was followed by civil war, the Taliban 1996-2001 rule and the US invasion in late 2001.