At 1.14 pm on oct. 2, leaving his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, waiting in the car, journalist Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to collect a document so they could marry.
Cengiz waited for hours, before asking consulate officials where he was. “He’s already left,” she was told. Tragically, it now appears the Washington Post columnist was killed within seven minutes of his arrival at the consulate; murdered by Saudi agents waiting inside.
Turkish officials claim gruesome audio and video recordings prove Khashoggi was tortured – it’s thought his fingers were cut off – beheaded and then dismembered by a Saudi squad. A team of 15 men, one armed with a bone saw, had flown in on private jets from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, earlier that day.
“You can hear his voice and the voices of the men speaking Arabic,” the Washington Post quotes a Turkish source. “You can hear how he was interrogated, tortured and then murdered.” The hit squad, which allegedly included Melbourne-trained doctor Salah al-Tubaigy, flew out of Istanbul a few hours later. The doctor is yet to comment on allegations of his involvement. “Jamal Khashoggi’s murder has had repercussions around the world,” Kumuda Simpson- Gray, a lecturer in international relations at La Trobe University, tells WHO.
“There have been other detentions and arrests of the [Saudi] Crown Prince’s critics, but this killing has sparked so much outrage and condemnation, it may even affect the long-term relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia. “The Saudis are the largest supplier of oil to the global market. But with this barbaric act, many Americans may start to wonder, ‘How much longer do we have to deal with these trade partners, because it makes us look so bad?’ ”
For more than two weeks after his death, Saudi Arabia denied any knowledge or responsibility for Khashoggi’s fate. The journalist, a vocal critic of Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who’s well- known for arresting and jailing his critics, had fled Saudi Arabia in Sept. 2017.
The Crown Prince told Bloomberg News on Oct. 4 he was “very keen to know what happened. My understanding is he entered and he got out after a few minutes, or one hour. I’m not sure”.
But as Turkish authorities continued to release damning evidence, on Oct. 19, Saudi Arabia finally pronounced Khashoggi had died in its consulate in a “fist fight,” for which 18 people had been arrested.
Two men close to the Crown Prince, key adviser Saud al- Qahtani and deputy intelligence chief Ahmed al-Assiri, were among five people fired.
A day later, however, a Saudi official told Reuters the journalist had died when placed in a chokehold after he’d raised his voice. Bin Salman, 33, has continued to deny knowledge of the killing, though Turkish insiders say his personal secretary was phoned four times that afternoon.
Since replacing his cousin Mohammed bin Nayef in June 2017, the Crown Prince has been Saudi Arabia’s most powerful figure, friendly with the British royal family (he dined with the Queen in March), and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Halting lucrative arms deals with Saudi Arabia as punishmen would be a “tough pill to swallow,” he pronounced. On Oct. 18, Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne told WHO she had “urged the Saudi Government to cooperate fully with the Turkish authorities in the joint investigation into [Khashoggi’s] disappearance”.
“That’s an incredibly weak response on Australia’s part to what is an outrageous violation of this man’s human rights,” Simpson- Gray says. “Australia is clearly using very careful language, watching and waiting to see what America does first.” Says Andrew Smith, from Campaign Against Arms Trade, “Saudi Arabia, one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, has committed terrible atrocities … I hope it does lead to change; that politicians do take action and that the voice of arms companies is no longer so dominant in the corridors of power.”
Meanwhile, Khashoggi’s traumatised fiancée, now in hiding, mourns the man she was to marry.
“They took your bodily presence from my world. But your beautiful laugh will remain in my soul forever,” Cengiz posted.
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
