• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

Saudi journalist disappears in embassy, believed murdered

Torture is often a tool of interrogation. They might have thought, correctly or not, that he could give up information about other government opponents. It seems pretty obvious that a 15-man team traveling with a bone saw never intended to let him go, or let anyone know what happened to him.



Oh, come on. Like you would every leave the house without your bone saw.

Pull the other one.
 
Now Yeni Safak reports that one of the alleged killers died in a "suspicious car accident" in Riyadh. Reports Hürriyet, and I can't find it on the YS English page, so likely in Turkish.

Not sure this is especially "suspicious". It could very well be a red herring. In this context it's easy to connect dots before any conclusive evidence shows it was a suspicious death. I'm sure their standards of road driving aren't that high.
 
I don't know if it's true, but I heard a radio commentator claim that in Turkey a murder can't be prosecuted without a body. That would explain the (alleged) dismemberment, rather than just shooting him in an alley. They needed to make him disappear literally.
 
Story changes yet again. Now it's "an accidental killing during a live kidnapping attempt", which interestingly enough a number of news outlets were suggesting SA was preparing to announce officially several days ago. It turns out they were right after all - if not about the exact time, then about the basic details of the story.

The latest account, provided by a Saudi official who requested anonymity, includes details on how the team of 15 Saudi nationals sent to confront Khashoggi on Oct. 2 had threatened him with being drugged and kidnapped and then killed him in a chokehold when he resisted. A member of the team then dressed in Khashoggi’s clothes to make it appear as if he had left the consulate.

After denying any involvement in the disappearance of Khashoggi, 59, for two weeks, Saudi Arabia on Saturday morning said he had died in a fistfight at the consulate. An hour later, another Saudi official attributed the death to a chokehold, which the senior official reiterated.

Turkish officials suspect the body of Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was cut up but the Saudi official said it was rolled up in a rug and given to a “local cooperator” for disposal. Asked about allegations that Khashoggi had been tortured and beheaded, he said preliminary results of the investigation did not suggest that.

The Saudi official presented what he said were Saudi internal intelligence documents which appeared to show the initiative to bring back dissidents as well as the specific one involving Khashoggi. He also showed testimony from those involved in what he described as the 15-man team’s cover-up, and the initial results of an internal probe. He did not provide proof to substantiate the findings of the investigation and the other evidence.
 
Reuters said:
A member of the team then dressed in Khashoggi’s clothes to make it appear as if he had left the consulate.


Wait, what? I thought there's no evidence that he left the consulate? Because he kind of couldn't?
 
Story changes yet again. Now it's "an accidental killing during a live kidnapping attempt", which interestingly enough a number of news outlets were suggesting SA was preparing to announce officially several days ago. It turns out they were right after all - if not about the exact time, then about the basic details of the story.

I was kind of suspicious of that gruesome drugged and sawed scenario.
 
Let's give it another week - by the end, the Saudis will admit that it was Elvis fighting with a Yeti in the Consulate, and Khashoggi got in the way.
 
No need to be suspicious yet. The Saudi government has changed its story several times already and may yet again in the near future.

IIRC it wasn't the Saudis who reported that he was drugged and sawed up alive.

And I can somewhat see how a "chokehold" could be confused for a fist fight. Could be muddled reports in the general chaos of the situation and especially if these anonymous sources had just audio evidence rather than actual video footage.

Breaking news is a bitch. 9/11 Truthers are still hanging onto breaking news from September 2001.
 
IIRC it wasn't the Saudis who reported that he was drugged and sawed up alive.

Correct - those sources were among the Turkish investigators.

And I can somewhat see how a "chokehold" could be confused for a fist fight. Could be muddled reports in the general chaos of the situation and especially if these anonymous sources had just audio evidence rather than actual video footage.

The reports of the "fistfight" and then the "chokehold", however, came from Saudi sources. They were not the ones who claimed to have had audio evidence; that was the Turkish sources. I don't believe the Saudi sources gave any hints as to how they came about the information by which they deduced the fistfight and/or chokehold explanations.
 
Last edited:
Although it keeps coming up, I missed the initial report of where the bonesaw entered the picture. Did one of the perpetrators have it check in his luggage or something? I'm well aware of how the media can take a vague report and really run with it.
 
Although it keeps coming up, I missed the initial report of where the bonesaw entered the picture. Did one of the perpetrators have it check in his luggage or something? I'm well aware of how the media can take a vague report and really run with it.

Turkish officials said they discovered it in the luggage the Saudi team carried into the country - possibly via x-ray.
 
And the story has recieved yet another nudge, so now it looks like they're going with Trump's "rogue killers" angle:

In an attempt to ease growing western doubts about the credibility of the Saudi position, the foreign minister Adel Al-Jubeir told Fox News on Sunday that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman knew nothing of any plan to kill Khashoggi and that the whereabouts of his body remained a mystery to Riyadh.

“This was an operation that was a rogue operation. This was an operation where individuals ended up exceeding the authorities and responsibilities they had,” Jubeir told Fox. “They made the mistake when they killed Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate and they tried to cover up for it.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...any-and-eu-condemn-saudi-explanation-of-death
 
Let’s assume for a moment that latest preposterous account is true.

Different countries have different laws, but our laws establish the concept of “felony murder”.

If he died “accidentally” during the course of an illegal act, it’s still murder.
 
Ah, the Thomas Becket scenario.

The poor crown prince must have been ready to cut some dinner for his family when he muttered 'will no one rid me of this troublesome journalist!" and his bodyguards just misinterpreted what the bone saw was for.
 
I wonder if "losing the body" might not be a bigger deal than the actual murder, for devout Muslims: Funeral Rites are are taken pretty seriously, an no one says that Khashoggi wasn't a practicing Muslim.
 
Speak for yourself :) Obviously I'm assuming coal plants aren't going to stay a thing.



Indeed. At least there's some political will to look into alternatives such as hydro and solar.



If my car can do 500km on a single charge, especially in Canadian winter, I'll switch to electric
https://www.independent.co.uk/envir...drax-gas-station-climate-change-a8585961.html Scottish Power now exclusively on wind power. Our vile weather has turned out to be good for something.
 

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom