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Who was Khashoggi? — 22 Comments

  1. Very curious indeed. He may have been a friend of the Erdogan regime, but if they determined he was about to undermine them in some way, they would not hesitate to murder him and make it into an anti-Saudi talking point.

    The Saudis under MbS are attempting to be slightly less Islamist than they have been. An actual liberal reform is not in view. And Erdogan is an Islamist and neo-Ottoman. The Turkish alliance with Iran makes me lean towards the Saudis, but of course as a Western Christian I don’t agree with either.

  2. Hostile to the Sisi regime. Seems I remember Sisi doing some cleanup both in Egypt and the Sinai. Maybe he’s extending his reach. Though why he’d antagonize the Saudis (sp?) I don’t know. Strange things happen in that part of the world, though.

  3. I am not sure why everyone seems to be assuming Khashoggi is actually dead. I think it likely that he is, but by no means certain.

  4. “Saudi Arabia has said the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who disappeared after visiting the country’s consulate in Istanbul on 2 October, is dead.

    The news, which cited preliminary findings from an official investigation, was announced on state television on Friday. It said a fight broke out between Khashoggi and people who met him in the consulate, leading to the death of the reporter.

    Khashoggi was a US permanent resident who wrote for the Washington Post.

    It was also announced that Gen Ahmed al-Asiri, an intelligence official linked to the case, had been dismissed. Eighteen Saudi nationals were said to have been arrested.

    More details soon …”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/19/jamal-khashoggi-dead-saudi-arabian-state-television-confirms

  5. As you mentioned, Neo, none of the players in this drama are choir boys.

    Yes, MBS had a motive for having Khashoggi killed. Are his thugs this clumsy? Maybe so, but one would think they were as cunning as most Arabs, as demonstrated by bin Laden and al Qaeda.

    Who else might have a motive to kill Khashoggi? The enemies of MBS inside the Saudi royal family are a possibility. Making Khashoggi’s disappearance/murder look like the doing of MBS could drive a wedge between the U.S. and MBS. This might diminish his power and allow his enemies in the royal family to unseat him. Since Khashoggi disappeared from the Saudi embassy, it looks like the Saudis of one faction or another could be involved.

    Would Khashoggi conspire with someone to fake his death? He was a Turkish ally. Would they work with him to spirit him away to safety after he left the embassy by a back door? Again, the Turks would like to drive a wedge between the U.S. and the Saudis. A log shot, but possible.

    So, there are several motives for Khashoggi’s apparent death. Having him silenced by MBS is the most apparent, but there are others. Maybe some motives that aren’t apparent to us. We may never know why or even how Khashoggi has disappeared. I believe Trump is correct to be quite cautious in placing blame or doing something rash.

  6. Ken:

    Thanks for the update.

    I’m out, and just using my phone right now and am busy with other things, so I’ll plan to read and write further when I get home.

    The Saudis are now saying he was killed in a fistfight at the embassy, which also seems highly improbable but I suppose at this point anything is possible. The Saudis have supposedly fired a whole bunch people as a result.

    So at this point it appears his death has been confirmed by both sides in the fray. The question—and it’s one I’m not sure we’ll ever get a straight answer to—is exactly who did it, and why.

  7. Here is a piece with considerable background over at FrontPageMag. Referring to Khashoggi,

    He became the editor-in-chief of Al Watan [in the Kingdom] twice, and on the second occasion, he quickly got into hot water for publishing a column by the poet Ibrahim al-Almaee challenging the basic Salafi premises. This led to Khashoggi’s seemingly forced resignation. — [probably] he was forced to resign due to official displeasure with articles published in the paper that were critical of the Kingdom’s harsh Islamic rules; the one by al-Almaee was the last straw.

    In December 2016, the Independent, citing a report from Middle East Eye, said Khashoggi had been banned by Saudi Arabian authorities from publishing or appearing on television “for criticising US President-elect Donald Trump.” That led Khashoggi to move permanently to the United States.

    Isn’t that a hoot. He moved permanently to the U.S. so that he could criticize Trump; without being jailed I presume.

    While the author claims Khashoggi was a reformer of sorts, he also states,

    Khashoggi was not a secularist, not a Saudi Ataturk, as some in the West seem to think. He believed in Islam and wanted it to spread, but to do so through “democratic” means — the “political Islam” of, for example, Mohamed Morsi in Egypt or Rachid Ghannouchi in Tunisia.

    Yeah, “democratic means” like Mohammed ‘I-only-need-to-be-elected-once’ Morsi, then I’ll be a dictator for life.

  8. The explanation seems to be that the killing occurred accidentally. Thus, the Prince knew nothing. Could be, but I doubt it.

    Still, this puts Trump in a hard spot. Our alliance with the Saudis is a big part of our Middle East strategy. Let’s hope Pompeo, Bolton, and other advisors can steer Trump safely through these dangerous waters.

  9. Funny how well Neo actually integrates many sources to nut out what is going on in this kind of situation where all the ‘official’ sources of information are so polluted with Astroturf that you can’t take any at face value. Go Neo!

  10. “Before anything else, he was a regime insider. He was a close associate of senior members of the royal family who were eclipsed by the new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.”

    “The picture is pretty clear…enemy of…the Saudis in power”

    I don’t think this is clear. Thomas Friedman wrote this 12 days ago:

    Last Nov. 7, I wrote a column about the new Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. It ended this way: “As a veteran Saudi journalist remarked to me of M.B.S.: ‘This guy saved Saudi Arabia from a slow death, but he needs to broaden his base. It is good that he is freeing the house of Saud of the influence of the clergy, but he is also not allowing any second opinion of his political and economic decisions.’”

    I don’t think that Saudi journalist, who was also a friend, would mind if I now identified him. His name was Jamal Khashoggi.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/opinion/jamal-khashoggi-missing-saudi-journalist.html

    Friedman has been sympathetic to MBS
    , and criticized for being an apologist. Khashoggi informed his views on this matter. According to Friedman, Khashoggi became more anti-MBS as the latter became more unhinged and repressive.

    I can’t say I’m familiar enough with Khashoggi to know for sure, but this contrasts with the picture being painted by what are now very common pro-Trump talking points, such as what we see in the NYPost opinion piece.

  11. He’d figure to be plugged into Qatar… which is a RED HOT item for Riyadh at this point in time.

    If he was not forthcoming that would’ve been a death sentence.

    Riyadh set the wet team and they went Postal.

  12. Keep in mind that as a jihadi, he’d WANT to die in such a visible manner.

    It’s entirely likely that he provoked the hit team.

    One is reminded of “True Romance” when Dennis Hopper tells Christopher Walken what he REALLY thinks about Sicilians. “I’ll have that cigarette, now.”

  13. If the team exceeded its mission, killed Khashoggi, and embarrassed MbS, then the team is probably in trouble. It seems to be an interior Saudi struggle, and just because MbS is the designated Crown Prince, it doesn’t mean he will survive. Saudis are known to be brutal with their own.

    An odd part about this is the Turks appear to have leaked some truth about the team killing Khashoggi and cutting him up to hide the fact. When do we hear truth from the Erdogan regime? On the other hand, they thought it was to their advantage to do so.

  14. I prefer President Trump’s realpolitik approach to this matter, as opposed to the more temperamental reactions from other quarters. The Middle East is a rough neighborhood, with a lot of ins and outs, and a lot of players with varied motives.

    So why was Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in the first place? He was there to get documents to allow him to marry his fiance, Hatice Cengiz (a Turkish name). Hatice is the Turkish equivalent of the name Khadija, which is that of the first wife of the Prophet Muhammad, thus its popularity. And Cengiz comes from that other major historical figure, Genghis Khan (uh-oh).

    Apparently, they did not meet until May of 2018 (as Jamal Khashoggi did not leave for Turkey until September 2017), which does make for a rapid courtship. Hatice Cengiz is a PhD student in Istanbul, with her as 38 (born in April 1980), to him as nearly 60 at the time of his demise.

    Jamal Khashoggi should have known better, and should never have gone into that consulate. This is especially true after what happened in Saudi Arabia in November of 2017, with the anti-corruption purge, with hundreds detained (including Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal), and billions of assets confiscated.

  15. One thing, to me, is crystal clear: Were it not for the fact that the WaPo considered him to be one of their own, this story wouldn’t be “news” in the U.S.

    The media continues to insert itself into the national narrative as one of the principal protagonists, rather than the unbiased observers they are supposed to be.

  16. Roy Nathanson on October 20, 2018 at 11:40 am at 11:40 am said:
    One thing, to me, is crystal clear: Were it not for the fact that the WaPo considered him to be one of their own, this story wouldn’t be “news” in the U.S.

    The media continues to insert itself into the national narrative as one of the principal protagonists, rather than the unbiased observers they are supposed to be.
    * * *
    Indeed.
    It remains to be seen whether their concern was over Khashoggi the journalist, or Khashoggi the Islamist activist.

    NOTE: saw a commenter somewhere wondering how it was that the Turks were able to find photos of and identify the 15 members of the Saudi group within 24 hours of the missing persons reportage.

    I think we are going to get a report from “Yalta” cooked up by the Turks, Saudis, and US to satisfy all of the principals (to some extent) with only as much bearing on the truth as is necessary to satisfy the rubes (including WaPo, until someone on the inside leaks).

  17. This is a good report also. It doesn’t go into the Saudi face-saving attempts, but does high-light the inanity of US pundits & pols making their foray into tv-crime-drama a make-or-break issue for foreign policy.

    Some stupidity is obvious – grabbing a guy out of a hostile country! – but I have also wondered why MbS (or whoever actually ordered the grab) didn’t have a “resisting arrest” story ready in case the arrest/rendition accident/murder ever became public, because he had to know that was a possibility.

    Much as WaPo may hate the idea, the head of the Kingdom’s police had the authority to order the arrest of a Kingdom national on the Kingdom’s sovereign “territory” at the consulate, and return him to SA for trial if he wanted to do that. Such an arrest would not be rendition or kidnapping; those all involve other nations or unauthorized detention.

    If Khashoggi resisted arrest (and he would not be so stupid as to go willingly to SA after having spent much effort in leaving the Kingdom), he could well have been accidentally killed during attempts to subdue him (US examples alone are too prolific to bother linking). A “gun drop” story would be even better, where they could accuse Khashoggi of threatening them during their peaceful attempts to persuade him to come home willingly for a little chat.

    But is was very stupid not to have story ready to counter the Turks expose, which happened remarkably quickly (and they still haven’t released the audio “proving” the crime happened as they described).

    https://thefederalist.com/2018/10/19/khashoggi-made-defining-issue-u-s-foreign-policy/

    * * *
    Yes, ‘gun drop’ stories are real things, and one of the sad evidences of corruption in law enforcement, although I do believe most LEOs are as honest and well-meaning as the populace in general.
    It’s the story you give the judge to explain that the perp pulled a gun on you and had to be shot in self defense, but the gun is one you surreptitiously carried yourself, just in case you need an out for using excessive force.
    I don’t have a link because this was a personal communication from a lawyer friend.

  18. When you live in a palace, you get palace intrigue.

    So, do I understand this correctly? The progressive media in the US is defending a Muslim Brotherhood apologist, critical of the reforms of the transitioning Saudi regime with its modest secularization. Khashoggi was critical of the ‘repression’ of MBS because he was clamping down on the status quo, hard-line Islamists in the palace and country.

    Bizarre, but not unexpected. In the great tradition of yellow journalism, the press is attempting to direct foreign policy, forcing the administration to distance themselves with anti-Iranian governments, leaving the influence of the Iranians in the region in place.

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