U.S. News

Jamal Khashoggi’s Widow Granted Political Asylum in the U.S.

‘IS THIS REAL?’

Hanan Elatr applied for asylum three years ago after fleeing the United Arab Emirates in the wake of her husband’s 2018 death.

Hanan Elatr the wife of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi
Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The widow of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, was granted political asylum in the United States late last month. “I couldn’t really believe it,” Hanan Elatr told the Post of reading her approval letter. “I said, ‘Is this real?’ I couldn’t digest it.” Elatr, a former Emirates flight attendant, was born in Egypt and married Khashoggi in Northern Virginia four months before his death. She fled the United Arab Emirates, her home of 26 years, after her husband’s murder and applied for asylum in 2020. Elatr said she feared for her life outside the U.S., alleging she’d been intimidated and mistreated by authorities in both Egypt and the UAE because of her relationship to Khashoggi. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) said in a statement to the Post that Elatr had “the clearest case for political asylum imaginable.”

Read it at The Washington Post