Rome – The fiancee of murdered Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi said on Tuesday that she deplored the decision by the Italian football league to play a top match in Saudi Arabia.
The Italian Super Cup final between Juventus and Lazio is scheduled to take place on Sunday, 1645 GMT, at the King Saud University Stadium in Riyadh.
It will be played in Saudi Arabia for the second time consecutively as the 2018 Super Cup match took place in Jeddah.
“I am personally heartbroken right now that your football is being used to promote this place,” Hatice Cengiz said, referring to Saudi Arabia.
Cengiz, who was speaking in Turkish via an interpreter, met the Foreign Press Association in Rome after a hearing at the human rights committee of the Italian Senate.
She chastised the international community for failing to stand up to Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich kingdom with a disputed human rights record, over the Khashoggi murder.
“Do you really think we should let this go just like that, this killing,” she said. “This needs to be investigated further and this is why I am here.”
Khashoggi was killed after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, on Oct. 2, 2018.
He went in to get papers to marry Cengiz, who was waiting for him outside.
On Dec. 6, speaking at a foreign policy conference in Rome, Saudi Arabia’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, called the murder “a huge mistake, not authorised.”
Cengiz said it was not credible for Saudi officials to claim that the assassination was not sanctioned by the regime. Turkish and Western intelligence agencies have drawn similar conclusions.
She also said that in Saudi Arabia five people have been sentenced to death over the case, but there is no information on who they are and on the exact charges against them.
(dpa/NAN)
