Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancee: I will only visit Trump if he takes action

Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancee has said she will only consider accepting Donald Trump’s invitation to the White House if the US president is prepared to make a “genuine contribution” to investigating the Saudi critic’s disappearance.

Hatice Cengiz said that if her husband-to-be, who has not been seen since he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October, had been murdered, the perpetrators’ status must not protect them.

Trump said he had invited Cengiz to the White House at the same time as vowing severe punishment if the Saudi regime was found to be involved. There have been doubts, however, about how far the US president is willing to go, given his administration’s deep ties to Riyadh.

Writing in the New York Times, on Saturday, Khashoggi’s birthday, Cengiz said: “If the allegations are true, and Jamal has been murdered by the errand boys of Mohammed bin Salman, he is already a martyr. His loss is not just mine but that of every person with a conscience and moral compass.

“If we have already lost Jamal, then condemnation is not enough. The people who took him from us, irrespective of their political positions, must be held accountable and punished to the full extent of the law.

“In recent days, I saw reports about President Trump wanting to invite me to the White House. If he makes a genuine contribution to the efforts to reveal what happened inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul that day, I will consider accepting his invitation.”

Cengiz said she still woke every morning hoping to hear from Khashoggi, but that the silence from Riyadh filled her with dread. She described her fiancé as a patriot who loved his country and rejected the label of dissident because she believed he was working for the good of Saudi Arabia.

She said that had she known it would be the last time she would see Khashoggi, she would have rather entered the consulate herself. “His voice and his ideas will reverberate, from Turkey to Saudi Arabia and across the world,” she wrote. “Oppression never lasts forever. Tyrants eventually pay for their sins.”