Do the rich and mighty Saudis have the right to kill?
SAUDI Arabian officials have admitted the killing of the 59-year-old Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by their agents inside their consulate in Istanbul on October 2. But no one can say exactly who are responsible, and how they could be made to pay for this murder most foul. Every effort is being made to absolve Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, of any accountability. This is understandable, but many believe that if the Crown Prince were to be absolved, then the right parties would not be held accountable.
After two weeks of insisting that Khashoggi had left the consulate freely within one hour after his arrival, Saudi officials finally said he was killed in a “fistfight” with at least 18 men, 15 of whom had been flown in from Riyadh on two special private planes. Turkish sources claim that four of the 15 were known to have travelled with the Crown Prince as security detail.
Khashoggi, a former advisor to some members of the Saudi royal family, fled to the United States in September 2017 to escape the Crown Prince’s crackdown on intellectuals and critics. He became a columnist on The Washington Post and wrote critical commentaries on the Crown Prince and how he’s running the Kingdom. On October 2, he went to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to secure papers that would confirm he had been divorced and was eligible to marry his Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz. He never came out of the consulate.
A ‘fistfight’: 1 vs 18
A story datelined Beirut has quoted a Saudi official as saying that as soon as Khashoggi saw the Saudi agents, he tried to flee, but the men stopped him, punches were thrown, Khashoggi screamed, then one of the men put him in a chokehold, and strangled him to death. If this is what the Saudi authorities called a “fistfight,” they may have to change their story. This certainly looks more of an “execution” than anything else.
According to Turkish sources, the killers tried to dress up one of them to look like Khashoggi and show him, on video, leaving the consulate on his own, as the Saudis had claimed. Obviously the proposed “Khashoggi double” was not convincing enough.
After admitting the killing, the Saudi government announced the arrest of the 15 agents who had come from Riyadh, plus one driver and two consular staff. It also announced the dismissal of one Saud al-Qahtani, a close aide to the Crown Prince, without however touching him as head of the Crown Prince’s cybersecurity organization, and Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, deputy director of Saudi intelligence, and alleged head of the entire Khashoggi operation.
But Turkish sources have expressed surprise that there has been no mention of the participation of Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, who was reportedly a part of the Crown Prince’s entourage to the US, France and Spain this year, and who was at the consulate before Khashoggi arrived. Mutreb reportedly called the Crown Prince’s private secretary four times from the office of the Consul General after Khashoggi was killed.
Unanswered questions
Despite the admission of the killing, the Saudis have failed to say what they did with the body of the deceased. If Khashoggi was “accidentally” killed in a fistfight, as claimed, there should have been no need to dispose of his body the way they did. There would have been no need to dismember it with a bone saw, and carried it out of the consulate in large suitcases, as Turkish authorities believe they did. Turkish investigators are now searching a forest and a farmhouse outside of Istanbul for traces of his remains.
In separate calls, King Salman and Prince Mohammed have expressed their condolences to Khashoggi’s son Salah over his father’s death. How the son took the King’s and the Crown Prince’s calls is not known; but he is said to have been barred from leaving the Kingdom at this time. This means he has no chance of living his late father’s life as a “dissident.”
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir has called the killing a “tremendous mistake” and has vowed to go after those responsible for what he called a “rogue operation” and a “cover-up” that did not involve the royal government. Whatever effect this may have among the Prince’s subjects at home, it is not likely to have much value abroad.
Erdogan and Trump
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised to reveal the details of the killing in their “full nakedness,” while US President Donald Trump says he would like to get to the bottom of the “deception and lies,” despite his apparent resolve not to risk an impending $110 billion US arms sales to the Saudis.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says there is “need for a prompt, thorough and transparent investigation into the circumstances of Khashoggi’s death and full accountability for those responsible,” although he has not indicated what exact process to use.
Some critics of Mohammed are hoping the scandal would prompt King Salman to revisit the appointment of Mohammed, and replace him with a less controversial Crown Prince. But there is no indication anything like this is going to happen. Despite growing controversy around the Crown Prince, the King has tasked him to head the committee that would restructure the kingdom’s intelligence agency. This does not indicate loss of confidence in the prince.
The popular outrage over the killing has been compared to the political turbulence that gushed out of the Arab Spring. Is there any chance this killing could in fact trigger anything like the pro-democracy upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Morocco, Yemen? There are some not-so-dormant political forces in the region and beyond waiting to see something like this happen.
Disciplining the Saudis
Within the Gulf alone, where the Saudis’ word and wealth hold sway, the tiny state of Qatar, whom the Saudis initially tried to blame for the negative worldwide reaction to Khashoggi’s disappearance, may want to ask its powerful allies to consider subjecting the Kingdom to the same treatment it had accorded Doha when on June 5, 2017 it led the UAE, Bharain and Egypt in imposing a poorly contrived diplomatic blockade on the super-rich state for allegedly supporting terrorism. The accusation against Qatar has never been proved, but the blockade remains.
It might be good for this monarchy to be reminded that despite all its wealth and power, it has not earned the right to kill any of its subjects who fail to lie prostrate before the King or the Crown Prince. Khashoggi was no Osama bin Laden who needed to be killed and buried in the Arabian Sea to be lost forever; he was merely an independent journalist whose view of the world was different from that of the Crown Prince.
The Saudis have been on a long roll since US President Bush ordered the secret classification of 28 pages of the 2002 report of the congressional Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, which contained allegations linking some Saudi individuals to the 9/11 hijackers. These pages have now been declassified, and the people are now better informed about the Saudis’ real role in the fight against international terrorism.
It may no longer take very much for some concerned major political players to decide that the Kingdom should be punished for its role in the Khashoggi murder. This may look like a curved ball from left field, but given the unpredictability of the situation, no one should be surprised if it happens.
fstatad@gmail.com
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