by Owen Wilson
The ultra-nationalist Aydinlik newspaper was more informed and alleged that Khashoggi was a spy and had brought ‘significant documents’ from Saudi Arabia.
‘It is known that Khashoggi had left the country with several files containing secret information. Some of them are thought to be in Istanbul while others are in Washington,’ it said.
Turkish government-mouthpiece Yeni Safak also added some conspiracy theories of its own by blaming the PLO, Israel, UAE, MBS, USA.
‘The team and mentality that poisoned Yasser Arafat [the late chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation] to death is also behind the Khashoggi murder. Killers like Mohammed Dahlan [the former leader of Fatah in Gaza] are in the backstage. The Dahlan team studied Turkey a year before 15 July [Turkey’s 2016 coup attempt] too! Although a journalist in opposition to Mohammed bin Salman has been killed, the signature belongs to Mohammed Bin Zayed al-Nahyan [the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces]. He is Salman’s patron. And the patron of both of them is US-Israeli intelligence.’
Nearly a week after Khashoggi had gone missing Donald Trump was now finally ready to address the issue as well.
‘I am concerned about it. I don’t like hearing about it. And hopefully that will sort itself out. Right now nobody knows anything about it, but there are some pretty bad stories going around. I do not like it,’ the US president said, saying nothing in particular.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for a thorough and open probe by Saudi Arabia into Khashoggi’s disappearance.
‘We call on the government of Saudi Arabia to support a thorough investigation of Mr Khashoggi’s disappearance and to be transparent about the results of that investigation,’ he said in a statement. It was a polite way of saying, the US is not going to do anything, since the Saudis would not in a million years agree to an ‘open’ probe. Given a coy inside into US intelligence on the truth of Turkey’s he added the vague words that he had seen ‘conflicting reports’.
With the Khashoggi story having changed from missing to murder in the consulate, the speculation in anticipation of the facts changed dramatically.
‘The Saudis are saying we can come investigate but they have, of course, disposed of the body,’ said Aktay.
President Erdoğan, on a trip to Hungary, stirred the cauldron further. ‘There are some people who came from Saudi Arabia,’ he said. ‘The public prosecutor’s office is looking into the issue.’ He added that CCTV footage from the airport was being studied.
Senior officials in Ankara leaked Khashoggi had been killed by a Saudi state hit squad sent to Istanbul to abduct or kill him. They were lying in wait when he arrived at the consulate on the afternoon of 2 October. Of particular interest were the convoy of six vehicles that left the consulate two hours after Khashoggi entered. Security camera footage showed boxes being loaded into a black van which carried diplomatic number plates. After leaving the consulate, three cars turned left on to a main road while the remaining three turned right. Investigators said one of the vehicles, a van with blacked out windows, had become the focus of the investigation. It had already been tracked to a nearby motorway where CCTV showed it taking the D100 expressway to Atatürk Airport, about an hour and fifteen’s minute drive from the consulate.
The police traced one consulate-owned vehicle travelling to Belgrad forest north of Istanbul late that night, and another ninety minutes south of the city heading to the mainly rural Yalova province.
‘Security forces have been examining footage from 150 cameras,’ the privately-owned website NTV reported. ‘Two cameras which clearly see the consulate have been spotted. No footage was found regarding Khashoggi’s exit from the consulate.’
The Turkish government were confident that the security cameras held the key.
‘There were some vehicles,’ said Yasin Aktay. ‘There were fifteen Saudi personnel inside. They were carrying bags and going to the airport. Turkish security cameras can follow up until the airport.’
Two of the vehicles were of particular interest according to the Washington-based scholar Selim Sazak who had given the scoop on the Turkish charge of murder in the consulate and was now revealing more information leaked to him.
‘One, on the suspicion that it might have been used to carry Jamal Khashoggi out of the consulate. Another, on the suspicion that it might have been used to shuttle some of the people involved,’ he said, citing a briefing by Turkish officials.
The day after Khashoggi’s disappearance, officials at the Saudi consulate were filmed burning documents in an oil drum in an open-air courtyard by a drone operated by the Turkish authorities or an existing camera on a nearby building. They were destroying all paperwork concerning Khashoggi’s murder, the Turks said. These included a ‘killing order’ brought from Riyadh on 1 October by a consulate work, it was said.
‘He conveyed the order for the planned execution to consul general Mohammed al-Otaibi,’ the pro-government Sabah newspaper reported.
In another line of investigation, the Turkish police were examining the flight records showing that two Saudi planes arrived at Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport on Tuesday and departed separately that same day, hours after Khashoggi was last seen. While the Saudi authorities continued to insist they played no role in Khashoggi’s disappearance, they now acknowledged that a ‘security delegation’ had been sent to Istanbul. But the Saudis did not offer a reason for the journey.
In Saudi Arabia, however, where MBS like Erdogan in Turkey, controlled the media and thus the story, the statements arising from the disappearance took a different turn.
The website of Saudi-funded Al-Arabiya TV said that the Khashoggi family were in contact with the Saudi authorities over his disappearance. Khashoggi’s son Salah told the station diplomatically: ‘The issue is that a Saudi citizen has gone missing. We are co-operating with the Saudi authorities to discover the circumstances of the incident.…’ Obligingly he added, ‘The whole thing is a personal issue and is completely unrelated to politics.’ Though US citizens, all of Khashoggi’s sons had been placed under house arrest after the murder and were barred from leaving Saudi Arabia.
After chairing a family meeting in the Saudi city of Jeddah, legal counsellor Muatassim Khashoggi chipped in by publicly affirming his unwavering faith in the royal family: ‘We trust the government and the measures it is taking. All efforts being exerted in Jamal Khashoggi’s case are being coordinated with the authorities and the embassy in Ankara.’
He accused foreign media of using his brother’s disappearance to ‘attack our country for negative purposes’. In a script that seemed to underline one of the Saudi government’s reasons for the assassination, he said that they had never heard of Khashoggi’s ‘alleged’ fiancée.
‘We don’t know her and we don’t know where she came from,’ he said. ‘She is not connected to the family in any way. Her tales and her existence could be part of her personal agenda.’
Salah Khashoggi backed this up: ‘I don’t know this woman. I’d never heard of her before except from the media.’
7 Horse-Trading
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On 9 October, another key figured entered the fray. This was the Saudi ambassador to Washington, the Crown Prince’s brother Prince Khalid. He had previously tried to persuade Khashoggi to return to Saudi Arabia. He now insisted that Khashoggi had not been detained, or killed by the Saudi authorities.
‘I know that many people here in Washington and around the world are concerned for his fate, but I assure you that all reports saying that Jamal Khashoggi vanished in the consulate in Istanbul, or that the kingdom’s authorities detained or killed him are completely false and baseless,’ the diplomat said.
He did however confirm both Khashoggi’s importance to the kingdom and the deep unease of Saudi top royals about the fact that he lived outside the kingdom: ‘Jamal has many friends in Saudi Arabia, and I am one of them. Despite differences on a number of issues including what
he called his “self-exile”, we kept in touch when he was in Washington.’
Echoing the script recited by the Khashoggi family – under a travel ban to leave Saudi Arabia – Prince Khalid painted a picture of ‘Jamal’ as someone ‘who has dedicated a large part of his life to serve his country’. The Ambassador went even further out on a limb. Like the consul general al-Otaibi he loyally called the rumours about Khashoggi’s lethal fate ‘malicious’ and ‘outrageous’.
On the same day, however, President Erdoğan’s government launched another shot across MBS’s bow. The Turkish press received more detail on the investigation into two Gulfstream jets owned by a company frequently used by the Saudi government landed in Istanbul the day Khashoggi ‘vanished’. Marked HZ-SK1 and HK-SK2, the jets were reported to have come from Riyadh. According to pro-government Sabah newspaper, the former landed at 3:41am and the latter at 4:29pm. In all, fifteen Saudis converged on Istanbul for the covert operation. Nine people arriving on the first jet checked in at 5:05am for three days into the five-star Wyndham Grand Hotel as well as the less expensive five-star Mövenpick Hotel, both within walking distance if not eye line of the consulate.
Footage was leaked showing the elite team entering the consulate approximately thirty minutes before Khashoggi and leaving three quarters of an hour after he had entered at 1:14am. Among them were Kashoggi’s friend intelligence officer brigadier-general Maher Mutreb, the leader of the operation, a thirty-one-year-old Saudi air force lieutenant called Meshad al-Bostani. On the outside CCTV footage that was leaked, furthermore, two civilians were seen entering the consulate as part of the team: Dr al-Tubaigy, head of forensic evidence of the Saudi Ministry of Interior and civil engineer Mustafa al-Madani. Dr Tubaighy had come from the Mövenpick and Lieut. al-Bostani from the Wyndham Grand.
They all left within twenty four hours despite their three-day reservations, government-paper of record Sabah noted in its front-page scoop. Three Saudis arrived at Atatürk Airport on the second jet HK-SK2 at 4:29pm by which time Khashoggi had already been murdered. HK-SK2 took off for Riyadh via Cairo some two hours later taking some of the first wave of Mövenpick Saudis with it. The three Saudis of the second wave were young men in their 30s and they had also been booked into the Wyndham for three days. Despite arriving after the assassination they headed for the consulate and left the country 5 hours after arrival when HK-SK1 carried most of the remaining Wyndham Grand members of the fifteen-member team – flying first to Dubai and then Riyadh. Civil engineer al-Madani, however, left Turkey at 18 minutes past midnight on a charter plane, it was noted.
‘They flew away with their secrets,’ Aksam, yet another newspaper close to the government added. ‘It seems that a period of headaches is about to begin for Saudi Arabia. A big crisis could break out between Ankara and Riyadh.’ Hopefully it added, ‘The horrible “extermination” of a journalist could also bring about the end of Crown Prince Salman.’
While the Washington Post published the last known photograph of Jamal Khashoggi – a still from the leaked CCTV footage showing him entering the Saudi consulate –Turkish officials said that if Khashoggi left the consulate he would have come out of the same door and would have been captured on the same camera.
Meanwhile, the BBC published off-air audio from an interview Khashoggi gave in London, three days before he disappeared. Asked if he would return to Saudi Arabia, he replied: ‘I don’t think I will be able to go home again. When I heard of an arrest of a friend who did nothing, it makes me feel like I shouldn’t go. The people being arrested aren’t even dissidents, they just have an independent mind.’
The BBC was criticised on social media for airing the recordings without Mr Khashoggi’s consent and before there was any definitive proof of his death. This was particularly upsetting to Ms Cengiz. All she had to go on was leaked information by Turkish officials. Turkey had still not given an official account of Khashoggi’s afternoon at the consulate.
‘I no longer feel like I am really alive,’ she said. ‘I can’t sleep. I don’t eat. As his fiancée, as someone close to Jamal and in love with Jamal, I am waiting for information from my government about what has happened to him. Where is Jamal?’
To answer that question, the Turkish police said it had formed a ‘special team’. They would look for DNA belonging to Khashoggi inside the mission, using Luminol and infrared light to find bloodstains, as well as ‘K-9’ police dogs in the search, they said. The Saudi consulate promised its full co-operation and the ambassador said: ‘What matters now is that the safety of Khashoggi is ensured and to reveal what happened.’ But nothing happened.
This was for two reasons. On the hand, MBS wasn’t going to let anyone have unfettered access. But also, behind the scenes, the Turkish government was negotiating furiously with Riyadh for horse-trading in a US-style deal: concessions in exchange for managing the intelligence it already had in its possession like it had with Washington – that is to say burying it.
Erdoğan’s adviser Yasin Aktay helpfully wheeled back his earlier claim that his friend had been murdered and said in interview to Russia Today and quoted in Saudi’s al-Arabiya that the ‘the Saudi state is not blamed here’, and even said ‘we have our own deep state’. Though whether these were in actual fact Aktay’s own words or ones edited by the Russian outlet is unclear. In any case, Turkey’s willingness to do a somersault was finessed by government-paper of note Sabah which now once again speculated that Khashoggi might have been smuggled out alive on one of the two Gulfstream jets.
But MBS, having total state-control of the Saudi press, unlike the in the US or what was left of it in Turkey, was having none of it. He would not be arm-twisted like the US government into a mutually advantageous deal.
The Saudi press hit back like a well-oiled machine. It was no longer Saudi enemies who were to blame but what they called ‘international media campaign that did not verify the incident but relentlessly contributed to tarnishing the image of Saudi Arabia’. Reciting the usual verbiage of totalitarian regimes, it said the on-existent ‘campaign’ was ‘politicised by sides that aim at settling scores with the kingdom at the expense of the truth’. The next day Aktay dismissed al-Arabiya’s quote that Khashoggi could have been ‘abducted by a third party, or perhaps by members of what he called the “deep state”.’ He blamed trolls for misquoting him.
Meanwhile (Shia) Iran’s state-run Channel One thought it could kill two birds with one stone and reported that it was likely that Israeli agents had co-operated with (Sunni) Saudi Arabia in Khashoggi’s murder.
Even Hatice Cengiz’s optimism was dimmed by the deafening silence from her government.
‘Although my hope slowly fades away each passing day, I remain confident that Jamal is still alive,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I’m simply trying to hide from the thought that I have lost a great man whose love I had earned.’
Writing in the Washington Post, she said her fiancé had told her that he missed his native Saudi Arabia and it had taken its toll on him. He had told her: ‘I miss my country very much. I miss my friends and family very much. I feel this deep pain every single moment.’
When they were married, they would split their time between Washington and Istanbul. Khashoggi had already applied for US citizenship.
‘We were in the middle of making wedding plans, life plans,’ she wrote. ‘After the consulate, we were going to buy appliances for our new home and set a date. All we needed was a piece of paper.’
‘He had been feeling so lonely, but I could see the clouds clearing,’ she added (unwittingly confirming to the Saudis how vulnerable Khashoggi had become, and that their intervention had been essential to safe-guard the kingdom’s secrets and relationship with Trump). Despite being worried about a wave of arrests in Saudi Arabia, she said, he did not fear anything happening to him on Turkish soil, saying he felt safe when he walked into the consulate and, no doubt, for being so close to President Erdoğan and his advisor Yasin Aktay whose number he had given to Hatice to
call if something seemed wrong.
‘I implore President Trump and first lady Melania Trump to help shed light on Jamal’s disappearance,’ she said. ‘I also urge Saudi Arabia, especially King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to show the same level of sensitivity and release CCTV footage from the consulate.… Jamal is a valuable person, an exemplary thinker and a courageous man who has been fighting for his principles. I don’t know how I can keep living if he was abducted or killed in Turkey.’
Later she wrote in The New York Times: ‘Had I known it would be the last time I would see Jamal, I would have rather entered the Saudi consulate myself. The rest is history: He never walked out of that building. And with him, I also got lost there.’
Even though he had ‘no foreboding of what was to come… He told me to alert the Turkish authorities if I did not hear from him soon.’ Seemingly, he had little idea that he was risking his life. Her statement also indirectly twisted the knife into the US intelligence community. It had to defend itself why Khashoggi had not been warned.
‘He was cheerful the morning we were going to the Saudi consulate,’ she explained.
‘We thought we would set the date of the wedding after dinner,’ she said. ‘This was part of the dream.’
But the dinner would never happen.
‘Jamal and I are no longer in the same world,’ she said. She raised the only question that was now left.
‘The heart grieves, the eye tears, and with your separation we are saddened, my dear Jamal,’ she tweeted in Arabic, also asking ‘#where is martyr Khashoggi’s body?’
8 Dr Death from Glasgow