This news outlet has been a longtime critic of America’s longstanding subservience to Saudi Arabia.
We believe its Islamic monarchy (a.k.a. the House of Saud) is a glorified terrorist organization – and we have repeatedly drawn attention to our nation’s embarrassing obsequiousness and accommodation of its brutal repressions.
Now Saudi Arabia’s leaders – our “partners in peace” – are being exposed for who they really are.
The apparent murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey is a new low … one that has drawn the attention of the world to the barbaric reprehensibility of this criminal “kingdom.”
Khashoggi – a former Saudi insider who became one of his government’s fiercest critics – walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 with the intention of obtaining a divorce decree that would permit him to marry his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz. He has not been seen or heard from since.
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(Via: YouTube)
What happened to him?
No one knows for sure, but Turkish authorities maintain Khashoggi was tortured and murdered inside the Saudi consulate by a fifteen-member assassination squad which meticulously documented its gruesome work. His fingers were cut off while he was still conscious and his body was dismembered while he was under the influence of an “unknown substance,” these authorities claim – citing an alleged audio recording of the murder provided to the Turkish government.
From the Middle East Eye …
It took seven minutes for Jamal Khashoggi to die, a Turkish source who has listened in full to an audio recording of the Saudi journalist’s last moments told Middle East Eye.
Khashoggi was dragged from the consul-general’s office at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and onto the table of his study next door, the Turkish source said.
Horrendous screams were then heard by a witness downstairs, the source said.
“The consul himself was taken out of the room. There was no attempt to interrogate him. They had come to kill him,” the source told MEE.
The screaming stopped when Khashoggi – who was last seen entering the Saudi consulate on 2 October – was injected with an as yet unknown substance.
Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy, who has been identified as the head of forensic evidence in the Saudi general security department, was one of the 15-member squad who arrived in Ankara earlier that day on a private jet.
Tubaigy began to cut Khashoggi’s body up on a table in the study while he was still alive, the Turkish source said.
The killing took seven minutes, the source said.
As he started to dismember the body, Tubaigy put on earphones and listened to music. He advised other members of the squad to do the same.
“When I do this job, I listen to music. You should do [that] too,” Tubaigy was recorded as saying, the source told MEE.
Unreal …
Turkish officials claimed the assassination squad had ties to Saudi crown price Mohammed bin Salman. They also claimed the Saudi consul, Mohammad al-Otaibi, initially objected to the murder but was threatened with his own life if he persisted in those objections.
Saudi Arabia’s leaders have not only denied having any role in the alleged assassination of Khashoggi, they are denying it even took place.
Khalid bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, condemned “malicious leaks and grim rumors” related to Khashoggi’s disappearance – adding “reports that suggest that Jamal Khashoggi went missing in the Consulate in Istanbul or that the Kingdom’s authorities have detained him or killed him are absolutely false, and baseless.”
America’s response? U.S. president Donald Trump suggested “rogue killers” might have murdered Khashoggi – an explanation that was widely panned (and widely viewed as an attempt to enable the embattled Saudi government).
Trump did dispatch U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo to Riyadh, where he met with bin Salman.
“They made a commitment to hold anyone connected to any wrongdoing that may be found accountable for that,” Pompeo said after the meeting. “Whether they are a senior officer or official, they promised accountability.”
Right … is anybody really buying that?
If we have said it once we have said it a million times, the Saudis are bad, bad people.
Hell, they are the real “rogue killers.”
Obviously we will await further confirmation – to the extent it becomes available – of Khashoggi’s fate, but whatever horrific end befell him this is a rare opportunity for our nation to reset its relationship with the House of Saud. Permanently. Unfortunately, it seems as though Trump is more interested in covering for these killers than he is speaking truth to them.
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