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Death sentences for  Khashoggi hit squad team dropped

A Saudi court has overturned 5 death sentences over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

In a final ruling eight defendants were jailed for between seven and 20 years. None have been named or evidence revealed.

“Five were given 20 years and three were jailed for seven to 10 years,” said a spokesman for the public prosecutor.

Back in May  Khashoggi’s sons said that the killers had been “pardoned”. The new sentences have been condemned as a “parody of justice” by a UN expert.

Khashoggi, 59, was killed and dismembered at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018.

The brutal slaying tarnished the reputation of Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

According to Turkish officials, Khashoggi, a critic of Prince Mohammed, was strangled and his body cut into pieces by a 15-man Saudi hit-squad inside the consulate. His remains have not been found.

Latest Novichok poison victim is brought out of his induced coma

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is out of his medically induced coma and is responding to speech, the Berlin hospital which is now treating him said.

His condition is improving and he is being weaned off mechanical ventilation.

Navalny was treated in a Siberian hospital then transferred to the German hospital.

It said he had been poisoned with Novichok.

The UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said the Russian ambassador was being summoned over the incident.

“Russia must hold a full, transparent investigation,” he said in a statement.

The Skripal father and daughter were poisoned with military grade deadly nerve agent, at their home in Salisbury in 2018.

They survived, as did Charlie Rowley, another Salsbury resident who took home a discarded bottle of ‘perfume’ he had found.

His girlfriend Dawn Sturges died from the poison.