The global tide is turning against Mohammed bin Salman | Financial Times

The global tide is turning against Mohammed bin Salman | Financial Times:

The savage murder last year of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, dismembered by Saudi Arabia’s agents in its consulate in Istanbul, surprised in the way it accelerated into the worst crisis between the kingdom and the west since September 11 2001, when 15 of the 19 hijackers who attacked the US turned out to be Saudis. It seems just as surprising that, as 2019 progresses, there is little let-up in the pressure on the Saudi leadership — in particular on Mohammed bin Salman, the powerful crown prince widely blamed for ordering the assassination. If anything, it is intensifying.

It surprises too when Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, is forced to go on US weekend TV shows to deny any Saudi part in the leaks of intimate texts and photos of Jeff Bezos, the Amazon owner, to the National Enquirer, the sensationalist US tabloid aligned with President Donald Trump. Why, after all, would Mr Bezos hint at a Saudi angle in this lurid story?

The Amazon multibillionaire is, of course, the owner of The Washington Post, in whose columns Khashoggi, an estranged court insider and former supporter of the crown prince, was writing trenchant critiques of the price Saudis were paying for Prince Mohammed’s tyrannical ways. The Post is relentlessly pursuing the Khashoggi case, insisting that the crown prince and his close circle were directly responsible for the murder — as the Turkish authorities, US intelligence agencies and some European governments have also concluded.