The Killing of Jamal Khashoggi
Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 to collect a document and was killed inside it. He had been a mainstream Saudi journalist for thirty years — editor of a national newspaper, a former adviser to the intelligence chief, and a man with close connections to the royal family — who left for the United States in 2017 and began writing a column for the Washington Post that criticised the crown prince's arrests, the war in Yemen and the blockade of Qatar. He was not a revolutionary and described himself as a reformer. He needed a certificate confirming his divorce in order to remarry, was told to come back for it, and was met by a team of fifteen men who had flown in that morning on two private aircraft. Turkish intelligence had the consulate bugged. He was suffocated within minutes and his body was dismembered with a bone saw brought for the purpose, and has never been found. Riyadh said first that he had left the building, then that he had died in a fistfight, then that it was a rogue operation. Turkey released the recordings selectively over weeks. A Saudi court convicted eight men and overturned the death sentences. The American intelligence assessment declassified in 2021 concluded that Mohammed bin Salman had approved the operation, and no sanction of any kind was applied to him. His fiancée was waiting outside the door. The consequence most worth stating is the absence of one. A journalist was murdered in a diplomatic building by a state team, the intelligence finding was published, and within three years the man it named was being received in western capitals again over energy prices.
- Year: 2018 CE
- Category: Political Violence
