Political asylum in the United States has been granted to the widow of the murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggithe Washington Post announced yesterday, Thursday.

“I really couldn’t believe it,” Hanan Elatr said, according to the American newspaper, after reading the letter informing her of the decision of the American authorities to grant her asylum.

Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in 2018 inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. He had once worked at the Saudi embassy in Washington, but became a critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and in 2018 was warned not to return to Saudi Arabia and settled in Northern Virginia.

Hanan Elatr – who had married Khashoggi in June 2018 in an Islamic ceremony in Northern Virginia in secret from his then-Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, and they lived separately, he in Fairfax, she in Dubai – had gone into hiding since the murder of her husband and the decision by US authorities confirms her claims that her life would be in danger if she returned to Egypt, her native country, or to the United Arab Emirates, where she lived for 26 years until Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. She fled after Emirates refused to renew her contract as a flight attendant and consequently could no longer live in Dubai, the US newspaper reported.

According to the same source, this may be one of the last acts in the Khashoggi case, which at one point appeared to threaten US-Saudi relations. Those tensions were dismissed during the administration of Donald Trump and masked by the decision last year by the current administration of Joe Biden to reconcile with Saudi Arabia and grant state immunity to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom the CIA concluded that he ordered Khashoggi’s murder.

In her asylum application, Elatr had told US authorities that Egypt detained and mistreated her family and confiscated their passports because of her relationship with Khashoggi. In 2018, four months before his murder, the United Arab Emirates detained and interrogated her while infecting her seized mobile phones with military-grade spyware. It was a period in which he was in constant communication with Khashoggi.

Elatr’s lawyer, Rada Fahmi, told the Washington Post that her client is seeking compensation from the Saudi government for her husband’s death and is demanding that Turkey return Khashoggi’s phones so they can be analyzed.