Photo: The Asahi Shimbun/Getty Images

On Wednesday, the United Nations released the results of a five-month investigation into the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Utilizing recordings and forensic evidence from inside Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, where Khashoggi was killed, the 100-page report details the grisly final moments of the journalist’s life. The report suggested that Khashoggi first struggled with his killers, after which he “could have been injected with a sedative and then suffocated using a plastic bag.” The report’s author, Agnes Callamard, the U.N. human rights agency’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, places guilt for the murder squarely on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, emphasizing the “individual liability” of many senior officials. There was “credible evidence,” the report said, of the direct involvement of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Describing Khashoggi’s murder as a “deliberate, premeditated execution” and an “extrajudicial killing for which the state of Saudi Arabia is responsible under international human rights law,” Callamard called on the U.N. secretary general to establish an international criminal investigation.

Callamard also pointed to “Saudi Arabia’s continual denials and scene clean-up” following the killing, excoriating the kingdom’s lack of transparency, cover-up efforts, and hampering of Turkish law enforcement — enough, argued the report, to amount to obstruction of justice. She also deplored Saudi Arabia’s secretive prosecution of 11 Saudis supposedly linked to the crime who have quietly and anonymously been put on trial inside the kingdom. According to the report, these proceedings failed to meet international standards and should be handed over to the international community.

Despite the chilling and highly documented details of the report, Callamard’s articulate arguments are likely to go unheeded.

The findings reinforced public opinion, which already held the Saudi government, and bin Salman personally, accountable for Khashoggi’s death. While increasing the number of confirmed details on the public record, the report also largely echoes the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community, which declared barely a month after the murder that the crown prince likely ordered the killing himself. Callamard singled out the U.S., calling on the country to recognize its duties to Khashoggi as a legal U.S. resident and its jurisdiction to investigate, and prosecute, possible stateside links to the plot. It also called out the American government for failing to honor multiple Freedom of Information Act requests, filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Committee to Protect Journalists for documents related to the CIA’s investigation of the crime. Despite the chilling and highly documented details of the report, Callamard’s articulate arguments are likely to go unheeded. From the beginning of the Khashoggi affair, President Donald Trump set himself firmly in defense of the Saudi government and bin Salman, in particular. Trump has repeatedly and openly dismissed accusations against the crown prince, calling him a “very good ally” and refusing to accept the findings of his own intelligence community. Rather, he’s reassured Riyadh both rhetorically and materially, invoking the veto power to sustain U.S. support of the Saudi-led war in Yemen and using emergency powers to pursue massive arms deals with the kingdom. Trump’s unequivocal, lavish support of the Saudi regime has garnered a rare level of bipartisan opposition, yet so far, the executive branch has largely won out. Without a strong rebuke from the U.S., any international outcry is unlikely to influence Saudi behavior. Bolstered by a fawning president and strategic alliances with the United Arab Emirates and Israel, Riyadh has proven remarkably immune to anyone else’s critiques.