COLUMN: OPINION ON PAGE ONE- This isn’t just about one Saudi journalist – By Francisco S. Tatad
.
ON October 2, Jamal Khashoggi, a 59-year-old Arab journalist living in self-exile in Virginia, USA, and writing a monthly column on the Washington Post, entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to claim a document that would allow him to marry his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, a doctoral student at the University of Istanbul. He never came out of the building again. Turkish authorities believe he was killed on orders of the highest Saudi authorities in Riyadh who regarded him as a political dissident — a label rejected by Khashoggi, who described himself as an independent journalist in the service of truth.
Turkish authorities claim to have proof the Saudi monarchy sent 15 men from Saudi Arabia to kill Jamal and dismember his parts with a bone saw. They claim to have obtained a video showing Jamal being tortured and killed within the premises of the consulate and then his body being removed. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has told Bloomberg that Khashoggi left the consulate after “a few minutes or within the hour.” And Prince Khaled bin Salman, the Crown Prince’s brother and Saudi ambassador to the US, said all reports about the disappearance were “completely baseless and false.” These statements are unsupported by any evidence.
A desert storm
Saudi stock prices have plummeted; a number of foreign participants in “Davos in the Desert,” a high-profile international business conference in Riyadh, have withdrawn; and a couple of US public relations and lobby firms have cancelled their contracts with the Saudis. Saudi-owned media, both in the Gulf and beyond, have attacked the reports about the disappearance as “fake news” and a “foreign conspiracy” allegedly hatched by the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar, to “denigrate and destabilize” the Kingdom.
This seems to be an inversion of what’s happening. It is rather Saudi Arabia, together with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, which has instituted a diplomatic blockade against Qatar on unsubstantiated charges of funding terrorism. Doha hosts the biggest US military base in the Middle East in the fight against terrorism.
All pro-Saudi media outlets have been mobilized to denounce the story about Jamal’s disappearance. The New York Times and The Washington Post, among others, have tried to present a balanced view, but the news daily Okaz, for one, is reported to have claimed that Qatar owns 50 percent of the Post, and that’s why it insists on its pro-Khashoggi story. The Post is supposed to be owned by Jeff Bezos, an American billionaire.
.
– SPACE RESERVE FOR YOUR ADVERTISEMENT –
.
Erdogan and Trump
Both Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and US President Donald Trump have called on the Saudis to account for Jamal’s disappearance. Erdogan, because the incident happened in Turkey, and Jamal is (or was) of Turkish ancestral origin; Trump, because Jamal had been living in the US since he fled Saudi Arabia in September 2017 to escape the Crown Prince’s crackdown on writers and intellectuals.
Turkey has demanded proof that Jamal had left the building, as claimed. Trump has warned the Saudis of “severe punishment” if it is finally shown that they had killed Jamal. The Saudis have in turn warned Trump of severe retaliation, should he go “out of bounds.” This was, so far as we know, the strongest exchange ever heard between the two staunch allies; the US has always been extra protective of its authoritarian ally.
It has tried not to pressure Saudi Arabia to lift its ill-tempered and counter-productive diplomatic blockade against Qatar. In 2002, the Bush administration classified 28 pages of the December 2002 report of the joint congressional inquiry into the Intelligence Community Activities before the Terrorist Attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, showing some Saudi individuals’ contribution to the al-Qaida hijackers. It’s only now that these pages are finally being declassified.
.
– SPACE RESERVE FOR YOUR ADVERTISEMENT –
.
Jamal and Adnan Khashoggi
Who is (or who was) this Jamal Khashoggi that his disappearance and apparent death should now threaten to throw the whole Middle East into chaos? Where its powerful allies have failed to call out Saudi Arabia on so many human rights violations and its not too discreet support for Osama bin Laden, why should the unknown fate of one Saudi journalist finally thrust Riyadh into this maelstrom?
Jamal’s family came from the Turkish city of Kayseri, but his best-known family connection was to his uncle Adnan Khashoggi, the world’s richest arms dealer (worth $4 billion) in the 1980s. Adnan was born on July 25, 1935 in Mecca and died at 81 in London on June 6, 2017, after living a lavish lifestyle in the company of the most powerful and super rich elite.
His father, Mohammad Khashoggi, was King Abdul Aziz Al Saud’s personal physician, and his sister, the author Samira Khashoggi, married the Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed, and became the mother of Dodi Fayed, who became the lover of Lady Diana, the Princess of Wales, who died with him in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
James Bond movie fans will probably remember Adnan Khashoggi as the owner of the super yacht Nabila (Noble), named for his daughter of the same name, which was featured in one of the James Bond movies (“Never Say Never Again”) Donald Trump bought the yacht from Khashoggi, and renamed it Princess Trump. In 1991, Trump sold it to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who renamed it Kingdom SKR.
.
– SPACE RESERVE FOR YOUR ADVERTISEMENT –
.
Imelda and Khashoggi
However, Filipinos will most likely remember Khashoggi as the Saudi financier who was accused of “fronting” for Mrs. Imelda Marcos in the acquisition of some real estate property, jewelry and works of art in New York. In 1990, Imelda and Adnan were tried by jury in Manhattan and acquitted without having to present a single witness in their defense. The prosecution had presented 95 witnesses against them, but lawyer Garry Spence decided not to present a single witness in their defense, saying “there was no case to answer.” The jury agreed with Spence.
Jamal Khashoggi was not exactly a nobody after all. For many years he was a reporter on the pro-government Saudi Gazette, before he became editor in chief of Al-Arab News Channel and al Al Watan, a Saudi newspaper. He covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the rise of bin Laden, and also served as an adviser to some important Saudi officials, including Prince Turki Al-Faisal, former Saudi intelligence chief. When he fell out of favor with the government, he fled to the US. There he wrote a monthly column for The Washington Post, among other things.
That seemed enough to make him the Crown Prince’s best-known Saudi critic in the US press, and the first Arab journalist to vanish within the protected premises of the Saudi government.
If Jamal has in fact been killed by the Saudis, then he has become a martyr to his cause, says his fiancée. That should bring some solace to his loved ones and to his orphaned followers, especially at a time when El Salvador and the rest of the Christian world welcome the arrival of a new martyr, Saint Oscar Romero. But whether we’re dealing with an absolute monarchy or any other kind of civil society, we should all agree that murder can never be a solution to anything, and governments that kill in order to maintain or assert their power should be very heavily punished by the international community.
All photographs, news, editorials, opinions, information, data, others have been taken from the Internet ..aseanews.net | [email protected] |.For comments, Email to :D’Equalizer | [email protected] | Contributor
