A meticulous account of the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi | Financial Times:
On October 2 2018, at 1.14pm, Jamal Khashoggi, probably Saudi Arabia’s best-known journalist, walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, by prior appointment, to collect documents he needed for his forthcoming marriage. He was never seen again.
We now know he was murdered within minutes by a 15-man Saudi hit squad, probably drugged and asphyxiated, then dismembered and stuffed into bags. His desecrated body has not been recovered.
At first, the Saudi authorities shrugged and said Khashoggi had left the consulate — by the back door, although his fiancée Hatice Cengiz was waiting for him at the front door. The Saudis then said a negotiation to persuade Khashoggi to return to Riyadh from self-imposed exile in Washington had gone badly wrong. Khashoggi, a court insider whose outspokenness fell foul of Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto Saudi ruler, had been writing trenchant if measured columns in the Washington Post on the unbridled autocracy of the headstrong young prince. As tempers inside the consulate frayed, the Saudis recounted, a fist-fight broke out and Khashoggi, 60, somehow did not survive it.
 |
| CCTV footage of Jamal Khashoggi and his fiancée Hatice Cengiz leaving home on the day the Saudi journalist disappeared in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 2 2018 © Reuters |
On October 2 2018, at 1.14pm, Jamal Khashoggi, probably Saudi Arabia’s best-known journalist, walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, by prior appointment, to collect documents he needed for his forthcoming marriage. He was never seen again.
We now know he was murdered within minutes by a 15-man Saudi hit squad, probably drugged and asphyxiated, then dismembered and stuffed into bags. His desecrated body has not been recovered.
At first, the Saudi authorities shrugged and said Khashoggi had left the consulate — by the back door, although his fiancée Hatice Cengiz was waiting for him at the front door. The Saudis then said a negotiation to persuade Khashoggi to return to Riyadh from self-imposed exile in Washington had gone badly wrong. Khashoggi, a court insider whose outspokenness fell foul of Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince and de facto Saudi ruler, had been writing trenchant if measured columns in the Washington Post on the unbridled autocracy of the headstrong young prince. As tempers inside the consulate frayed, the Saudis recounted, a fist-fight broke out and Khashoggi, 60, somehow did not survive it.
No comments:
Post a Comment