One year after the murder of Khashoggi: Federal Government wants to restart police cooperation with Saudi Arabia

Eleven months after the brutal murder of Saudi agents on journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the federal government is working to normalize relations with autocratic-led Saudi Arabia.

Interior Ministry, Foreign Office and Chancellery have agreed to SPIEGEL information behind the scenes on it, again to send federal police into the kingdom to train there Saudi border guards.

The training and advisory mission, which started in 2009 and involved a total of 70 German officials last year, was suspended in October after the murder of journalist and regime critic Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Although the Federal Police had not closed its project office in Riyadh, there were no further training courses.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry confirmed the decision of the Federal Government on Friday evening on SPIEGEL inquiry: "The federal government has decided to resume the training measures".

What the Federal Government has moved to this is not known.

Then as now, Saudi Arabia is pilloried internationally for the killing of Kashoggi, the precarious human rights situation in the country, and the Yemeni war. In fact, all Western governments assume that Jamal Khashoggi, a vehement critic of the Saudi government, was assassinated by a killer squad on behalf of Riad.

Uno report on the Khashoggi murder "Has the sacrificial animal arrived?"

A UN Special Rapporteur recently came to the same conclusion in a recent report: "Khashoggi's killing was an out-of-court killing for which Saudi Arabia is responsible."

Nevertheless, the federal government wants to return to the kingdom. It is not yet decided when exactly the German police officers in Saudi Arabia will be active. The project office in Riyadh currently has three employees, according to the Interior Department. If the federal police started training again, the office would be strengthened personnel.

In the past, the Federal Government had justified the use of the fact that the modernization of the Saudi border protection in the "foreign and security policy interest" of the Federal Republic was. Similarly, the training of the border guards was "an essential condition for an effective fight against terrorism in the entire region". However, the mission has always been a form of business development as it started in parallel with the sale of a state-of-the-art EADS Border Guard.

The suspension of the program in 2018 was only part of the German punitive measures for the brutal murder in Istanbul. In addition, the federal government also agreed a complete stop all arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia. The corresponding moratorium expires at the end of September , until then Berlin must decide whether to withdraw this sanction against Riyadh.

As a condition for normalizing relations, Berlin had always demanded a fair and transparent trial of the alleged killers of Jamal Kashoggi. Shortly after the attack, the Saudis arrested a group of intelligence and military officials who had planned and organized the killing of Kashoggi according to government data without the knowledge of the top government.

However, there can be no question of transparency or a fair trial: both the indictment, possible evidence and the process are top secret.