generalspeaking

Friday, October 19, 2018

Will Jamal Khashoggi Please Stand and Reveal His Presence : Alternatively, Requiescat in pace

Turkish police search the back garden of the residence of the Saudi consul in Istanbul. Photograph: Sedat Suna/EPA

"[The White House expects to have a Saudi account of the Khashoggi case] very soon. And I think we’ll be making a statement, a very strong statement."
"But, we’re waiting for the results of about three different investigations, and we should be able to get to the bottom fairly soon."
"Unless the miracle of all miracles happens, I would acknowledge that he’s dead. That’s based on everything — intelligence coming from every side."
U.S. President Donald Trump

A Turkish forensic science officer carries a box at the Saudi Arabian consulate. Photograph: Ozan Köse/AFP/Getty Images

Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi national, a journalist and a casual contributor to the Washington Post, living in self-imposed exile in the United States, visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul several weeks ago to obtain needed papers for him to proceed with a planned marriage. While his strain of Islamism is not all that different from the official Wahhabist Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Salafist Islam, Kashoggi fell out with the regime, criticizing King Salman and the heir apparent, Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

He lives in the United States because he feels himself to be in a safer environment there, with the knowledge that the Saudis don't look kindly upon those they consider traitors. Why this man with his seasoned experience as a critic would voluntarily enter a diplomatic mission in Turkey where the property on which the consulate stands is held to be Saudi by international convention boggles the mind. How cleverly cautious is that?

In any event, this Saudi critic of the Saudi regime, a hard-nosed journalist and even more hard-nosed Islamist, would undertake to test the resolve of the Saudi authorities to silence an irritating voice held to be influential in the West and embarrassing to the Kingdom, and did enter the consulate. His fiance waited outside in the expectation that he would soon emerge, papers in hand, and their marriage ceremony would shortly take place.

Neither happened. She left alone. He failed to join her, with or without the designated and desired official documents. His absence was immediately noted. His fiance did her best to ensure that everyone would know of his absence, puzzling, and alarming. Turkish officials took no time in announcing that he had come to an unfortunate end. As an ally of Saudi Arabia, though in conflict with it at times, it's a little surprising that Turkey has led the fray to establish what Saudi Arabia had done.

A still from surveillance camera footage shows a man thought to be a member of Mohammed bin Salman’s security detail. Photograph: AP

So what had they done? According to two unnamed Turkish police sources the 60-year-old journalist's life was extinguished in a very ugly manner. Meeting with officials at the consulate he then vanished into the ether. Or, as the conspiracy theorists would have it, was slaughtered, dismembered and hauled off. "We are worried about him", said Mohammad al-Otaibi, the Saudi consul general, to Reuters whom he had invited to tour the consulate with him. "But look, he is not here", he said, opening a number of cabinets.

Farce aside, well no, of course not. According to Turkish sources preferring to remain anonymous, the Kingdom had dispatched a "hit squad" comprised of no fewer than 15 assassins to travel from Riyadh to Istanbul the day Khashoggi vanished. One, Abdulaziz Mutreb, travelled on foreign trips extensively with the crown prince. Members of the squad left in a convoy of black vans with diplomatic licence plates around three in the afternoon, carrying, according to Turkish sources, the journalist's body parts with them.

Turkey has audio 'proof' said to be from the Apple watch that Khashoggi had set to record what followed, when he entered the consulate and was confronted by the presence of the 'squad'. A screaming Khashoggi is heard as his fingers are cut away, one after the other; no preliminary interrogation. The Saudi consul general enters, informs the men to leave and get on with things elsewhere, or he will "get in trouble", and they respond by telling him to be quiet, or on his return to Saudi Arabia, he might be next.