Saudi journalist disappears in embassy, believed murdered

zooterkin

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Dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has disappeared after going into the Saudi embassy in Istanbul to complete some paperwork regarding his impending marriage. The Turkish authorities are accusing the Saudis of murdering him and disposing of his body.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...alist-killed-inside-consulate-turkish-sources

Two Turkish officials claimed to Reuters that Khashoggi, 59, had been killed. The Reuters claim was circulated by a government spokesman, and confirmed by numerous other officials, some of whom claimed to have knowledge of how the body had been disposed of. Several officials alleged, without tabling evidence, that Khashoggi had first been tortured.

Officials believe that a team of 15 Saudis arrived on Tuesday to conduct the killing, then left the country soon afterwards.

...
Khashoggi had a regular column for the Washington Post and had also written for the Guardian. He had sought assurances about his safety from Saudi officials before entering the consulate to sign the divorce papers, a necessary step for him to marry his Turkish fiance, who was waiting for him outside.
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“My understanding is, he entered and he got out after a few minutes or one hour,” said Prince Mohammed. “I’m not sure. We are investigating this through the foreign ministry to see exactly what happened at that time."

I would assume it's quite simple - no doubt the embassy has CCTV.
 
fagin said:
“My understanding is, he entered and he got out after a few minutes or one hour,” said Prince Mohammed. “I’m not sure. We are investigating this through the foreign ministry to see exactly what happened at that time."

I would assume it's quite simple - no doubt the embassy has CCTV.
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The fact that they haven't offered any evidence that he left the embassy quickly seriously compromises their truthfulness. It makes their denials seem ridiculous. It's quite obvious that, no matter what happened here, he certainly did not simply walk out of the embassy. The Turkish security that protects the embassy have already said that they have watched the CCTV footage of the embassy and didn't see him leave on foot, although like always they saw Saudi diplomatic vehicles leave the premises.

One plausible non-murderous explanation is that the Saudis decided to kidnap him and bring him back to Saudi Arabia but that he inadvertently suffered a heart attack or some other unexpected complication because they drugged him. They still would've recklessly risked his life by even attempting this but it at least seems more reasonable than intentionally murdering considering the international fallout.

Then again Saudi Arabia's has become increasingly intolerant towards any real or simply imaginary dissidents, whether they are merely "commoner political activists" or well connected nobles. Whether this means The Crown Prince feels so vulnerable that he's engineering a Stalinesque Great Purge remains to be seen. In any case, Saudi Arabia's public nonchalance about the whole situation is pretty damning by itself considering who victim is.

Fun fact: The Saudi Crown Prince said that the consulate was "sovereign territory" of Saudi Arabia, which is completely false.
 
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Short of someone on the inside leaking information, the only way I can see of obtaining positive evidence a crime occurred would be for Turkey to expel the diplomats and then search the embassy. That wouldn't be an instanteous process I bet, and it may already be too late.
 
The headchoppers in Saudi Arabia are in charge of UN human rights. They are friends of Britain according to Dearlove, formerly of MI6, unlike the Palestinians who are to be exterminated. Follow the money.
 
A man who was known as a hack,
In the embassy suffered attack,
"He's been murdered!" they say,
But god, his fiancee!
He probably ****** off out the back.


I'm here all week, try the liver.
 
Trump and his son-in-law are supposed to be personal friends and pals with the King of Saudi Arabia. That complicates things even further with a dour Irishman on the Supreme Court to make a right judgment. Killing people is wrong.
 
Officials believe that a team of 15 Saudis arrived on Tuesday to conduct the killing.
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Bit over kill

You would think 2 or 3 with baseball bats would do the trick
 
Arcade22 said:
The fact that they haven't offered any evidence that he left the embassy quickly seriously compromises their truthfulness. It makes their denials seem ridiculous. It's quite obvious that, no matter what happened here, he certainly did not simply walk out of the embassy. The Turkish security that protects the embassy have already said that they have watched the CCTV footage of the embassy and didn't see him leave on foot, although like always they saw Saudi diplomatic vehicles leave the premises.
.....
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Reports say that his fiance went to the consulate with him and waited outside. He suspected a problem, and told her if he wasn't out in four hours or so, to start calling friends and officials. He didn't and she did.
 
BBC News

Jamal Khashoggi: Turkey says journalist was murdered in Saudi consulate

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45775819

Fears are growing over the missing Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, after Turkish officials said they believed he had been murdered.
Mr Khashoggi, a Saudi national, was last seen visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday.
A Turkish official told the BBC that initial investigations indicated he was murdered there.
Saudi Arabia has denied the accusations, saying it is "working to search for him".
Mr Khashoggi has contributed articles to the Washington Post's opinion section. The Post said it would be a "monstrous and unfathomable act" if he had been killed.

An official of Turkey's ruling AK Party told broadcaster CNN Turk there was concrete evidence in the case, although none has yet been presented.
 
They will find him

"We found Jamal at 3pm today in the lavatory. It appears that he must have some how slipped and accidentally, tragically penetrated himself in the chest four times with a pen in his pocket and beheaded himself on the edge of the sink as he fell. Of course we wish all his friends and family our deepest regrets and condolences"
 
I'm pleasantly surprised that Turkish police is cooperating on this. Do SA and Turkey have conflicts about other issues?

I'm not used to Turkey selflessly doing the right thing under its current government.
 
Eddie Dane said:
I'm pleasantly surprised that Turkish police is cooperating on this. Do SA and Turkey have conflicts about other issues?

I'm not used to Turkey selflessly doing the right thing under its current government.
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basically, as the heir to the Ottoman Empire, Turkey thinks it should control Mecca and Medina.
Turkey is also on the side of Qatar in the disputes with S.A..

According to a 2013 Pew global opinion poll, Turks hold the most negative view of Saudi Arabia out of any surveyed Muslim country, with 26% expressing a favourable view and 53% expressing an unfavourable view.
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Being a journalist seems an increasingly-poor career choice now all over the world. NPR’s The World has recently reported on the state of affairs in Mexico, where much as in Russia journalists are increasingly attacked, threatened, beaten, or simply killed... Both by government actors or by the cartels.
 
Bikewer said:
Being a journalist seems an increasingly-poor career choice now all over the world. NPR’s The World has recently reported on the state of affairs in Mexico, where much as in Russia journalists are increasingly attacked, threatened, beaten, or simply killed... Both by government actors or by the cartels.
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And Dear Leader isn't helping matters any with his vicious, belligerent attacks on Fake Media. This guy is/was a legal U.S. resident and an employee of a U.S. newspaper. Let's see if the Trump administration has anything to say.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.eeff18540e21
 
fagin said:
I don't think anyone is exterminating Palestinians Henri. Somewhat off topic.
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I am not so sure about that:

https://www.strategic-culture.org/n...ter-advocated-exterminating-palestinians.html

On 1 July 2014, Shaked had approvingly posted to her Facebook page a statement by Uri Elitzer, who had previously served as Netanyahu’s Press Secretary. Shaked said, in her Facebook post, that his statement had been «written 12 years ago» but is «relevant today as it was then» (i.e., back in 2002). Elitzer’s statement urged extermination of all Palestinians.
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Henri McPhee said:
The headchoppers in Saudi Arabia are in charge of UN human rights. They are friends of Britain according to Dearlove, formerly of MI6, unlike the Palestinians who are to be exterminated. Follow the money.
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fagin said:
I don't think anyone is exterminating Palestinians Henri. Somewhat off topic.
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I think there is a bit of a difference between someone (an idiot presumably) 'urging' something, and actual extermination...

And if you had followed your link, you might have noticed that the word 'extermination' is not actually used. I will admit it is a rather extreme view.

Henri McPhee said:
I am not so sure about that:

On 1 July 2014, Shaked had approvingly posted to her Facebook page a statement by Uri Elitzer, who had previously served as Netanyahu’s Press Secretary. Shaked said, in her Facebook post, that his statement had been «written 12 years ago» but is «relevant today as it was then» (i.e., back in 2002). Elitzer’s statement urged extermination of all Palestinians.
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https://www.strategic-culture.org/n...ter-advocated-exterminating-palestinians.html
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ETA but still has squat to do with the OP.
 
fagin said:
I think there is a bit of a difference between someone (an idiot presumably) 'urging' something, and actual extermination...

And if you had followed your link, you might have noticed that the word 'extermination' is not actually used. I will admit it is a rather extreme view.



ETA but still has squat to do with the OP.
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It's relevant to this thread in the way Israel and Saudi Arabia seem to be allies at the moment in a war on Iran, and possibly on Yemen, and both countries have been interfering in the internal affairs of Syria, and supporting the Syrian opposition.

Journalists don't get bugged or murdered unless they incur the "frown of the great" as Shakespeare wrote once.
 
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Henri McPhee said:
The headchoppers in Saudi Arabia are in charge of UN human rights. They are friends of Britain according to Dearlove, formerly of MI6, unlike the Palestinians who are to be exterminated. Follow the money.
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fagin said:
I don't think anyone is exterminating Palestinians Henri. Somewhat off topic.
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Henri McPhee said:
It's relevant to this thread in the way Israel and Saudi Arabia seem to be allies at the moment in a war on Iran, and possibly on Yemen, and both countries have been interfering in the internal affairs of Syria, and supporting the Syrian opposition.

Journalists don't get bugged or murdered unless they incur the "frown of the great" as Shakespeare wrote once.
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Unless you are suggesting that Mossad took him out in the Saudi Embassy, which is patently absurd, you are just doing your standard join the invisible dots rambling.

He was critical of SA, and disappeared in the SA embassy.

How hard is it?

And the Palestinians are still not being exterminated.
 
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Bikewer said:
Being a journalist seems an increasingly-poor career choice now all over the world. NPR’s The World has recently reported on the state of affairs in Mexico, where much as in Russia journalists are increasingly attacked, threatened, beaten, or simply killed... Both by government actors or by the cartels.
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Our main paper here in Guate has taken great pride in persisting with investigative pieces despite not a few attacks and assassinations :(
 
I couldn't see him in the broom cupboard, when that awfully nice ambassador opened the door to it so journalists could see for themselves he wasn't hiding in there.
 
I follow this guy on Youtube, he's quite interesting and often does commentary on SA.

According to him, this latest crazy stunt is the last nail in the coffin of SA's Vision 2030 program. After having a purge, a crappy unwinnable war in Yemen, a host of cancelled ambitious infrastructure projects etc, investors are running for the door.

Looks like SA will still be a fundamentalist oil-state by the time we ditch oil, or it runs out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fYy6KRrSBc
 
Wildy said:
But they're different kinds of Sunni. Then again I'd personally question if Wahabis are still Sunni, but that's a different discussion.
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I suspect the animosity is more ethnic than religious, Arab vs Turk. Although it does blend in with religion-- Arabs in general and Saudi Arabia in particular seem to consider themselves the most genuine inheritors of Islam, and while other ethnicities are certainly welcome to be Muslims too they can never be quite quite, not like a Saudi Arab can be. This attitude, or the perception of it, has caused some difficulties in the past.
 
NKARA, Turkey — Top Turkish security officials have concluded that the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on orders from the highest levels of the royal court, a senior official said Tuesday.

The official described a quick and complex operation in which Mr. Khashoggi was killed within two hours of his arrival at the consulate by a team of Saudi agents, who dismembered his body with a bone saw they brought for the purpose.

“It is like ‘Pulp Fiction,’” the official said.

Saudi officials, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have denied the allegations, insisting that Mr. Khashoggi left the consulate freely shortly after he arrived. President Recep Tayyib Erdogan of Turkey has demanded that the Saudis provide evidence proving their claim.

It remains unclear how the Turkish government determined that Mr. Khashoggi had been killed, but the conclusion that the Saudi royal court ordered it could increase the pressure on both sides of the dispute. It would make it more difficult for the two governments to come up with a face-saving story blaming Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance on some third party, on rogue elements of the Saudi security forces, or on an accident during an interrogation that went wrong.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/09/world/europe/jamal-khashoggi-turkey-saudi-arabia.html

The claim that he left quickly is utterly unbelievable because they would've very quickly and conclusively show this with footage from the myriad of CCTV cameras that are both inside and outside of the consulate. The Saudi's haven't offered a single sliver of proof that he simply walked away.

Is too much to hope that this will be straw the brakes the camels back and forces western countries to reconsider their relations with this murderous barbaric regime? Or is it just too good to stop suckling on those precious oil pumps?
 
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