Khashoggi and the Crown Prince
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Now that Saudi Arabia had declined a deal the gloves came off. Turkish pro-government newspaper Sabah had already published the names of the fifteen suspects, also giving the year of their birth and printing pictures of all fifteen taken as they passed through passport control. They were all Saudi men aged between thirty and fifty-seven. The global press started filling in the CVs of the fifteen men. About Dr Salah Mohammed al-Tubaigy Sabah revealed more pictures showing that he was also on the board of the Saudi Society of Forensic Medicine and an expert in post-mortem examinations. The implication was – who better to clean up a crime scene?
The New York Times made the other connection and noted that he was a ‘figure of such stature that he could be directed only by a high-ranking Saudi authority’. Al-Tubaigy had learnt his trade at Glasgow University, where he took a master’s in forensic medicine, and he had spent three months with the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine in Australia. He was now being dubbed ‘Dr Death’.
Other passengers were also being identified by the international and Turkish media. Taken together, the background information made clear that this was an elite Saudi hit squad of special forces members. There was a lieutenant colonel in the Saudi civil defence force; a major and lieutenant in the Saudi air force; a lieutenant in the service guarding the Crown Prince’s palace; and team-leader Mutreb was quickly identified as a member of the Saudi intelligence community and former first secretary at the Saudi embassy in London. He was a former colleague of Khashoggi’s at the embassy. They had been identified via open source internet tools by Oslo-based researcher Iyad al-Baghdadi. The Turkish daily newspaper Sahab also published a picture of one of them, royal guard Mohammed Saad al-Zahrani, hobnobbing with Mohammed bin Salman, while Mutreb was with the Crown Prince’s entourage during his trip to the US in April 2018. The New York Times was to confirm their names and trace their closeness to MBS through its own research. CCTV coverage was leaked by Turkish officials showing Mutreb outside the Saudi consul general’s residence on Meselik Street at 4.53pm.
CNN now identified Mustafa al-Madani, who was seen entering the consulate with forensic medicine chief al-Tubaigy arriving from the Mövenpick Hotel. The fifty-seven-year-old al-Madani was of a similar height and build as Khashoggi. He had allegedly been brought along as a body double, though – unlike Khashoggi – he did not have a beard coming into the building.
However, the masses of CCTV footage leaked by the Turkish authorities showed him wearing a fake beard when he left the consulate by a back door at 2.52pm, while Hartice Cengiz was waiting out front. He was then wearing Khashoggi’s black jacket and had swapped his a blue-and-white checked shirt and dark blue trousers for Khashoggi’s grey shirt and grey trousers.
‘Khashoggi’s clothes were probably still warm when al-Madani put them on,’ a senior Turkish official said to CNN to provide grisly context.
However, when he emerged he was still wearing the same pair of dark trainers with a white stripe around the sole he had on when he entered the building, while Khashoggi had been wearing dark brogues. And while al-Madani had a full head of hair, Khashoggi was balding. CCTV showed al-Madani was accompanied by a man wearing a hoodie and a hooped shirt, and was carrying a plastic bag believed to contain the clothes al-Madani had worn when he entered the consulate. They hailed a taxi.
Half-an-hour later al-Madani was captured on CCTV at Istanbul’s famous Blue Mosque in the Sultanahmet district. About half-an-hour after that, al-Madani and his accomplice entered a public toilet, emerging again at 4.22pm. al-Madani was then dressed in the clothes he wore when he entered the consulate, while the plastic bag his accomplice was carrying was now thought to contain Khashoggi’s outfit. The two then had dinner in the Mesale restaurant, seemingly unperturbed by the events of the day. Then they took a taxi towards their hotel and threw the bag into a large bin nearby. They were later seen back at the hotel laughing and smiling. Al-Madani was to leave Turkey unhindered on a regular flight to Riyadh at 18 past midnight, back to safety in Riyadh – relative safety at any rate.
It remained unclear what had happened to Khashoggi’s body, or body parts, though. Airport security officials said they checked all bags that the Saudi teams took with them when they returned to the airport. But, without its own ears in the consulate, Turkish intelligence was still in the dark what had happened to Khashoggi and the flight was treated as any other flight leaving from the airport. There was nothing suspicious in any of them and the bags were loaded on to the jets for their return journey to Riyadh. It later, in fact, transpired that the checks on the first plane were not as thorough as they might have been.
When the Turkish authorities, alerted by Khashoggi’s fiancée, had become aware that Khashoggi was missing from his consular visit and the police rushed to Atatürk Airport, it had been too late to stop the first Gulfstream jet from leaving. But the second plane was still on the ground. It was searched and the authorities monitored the seven Saudis in the waiting room as they checked their luggage for the second flight. When nothing unusual was discovered, the private jet was also allowed to leave at 9:46pm, spiriting the military men of the operation to Saudi Arabia safely – or so they imagined.
As assassination allegations mounted, the US government was obliged to say something as Khashoggi was both a US resident and a high-profile Washington Post journalist. The US script now started rolling. A statement from the White House said that several members of the Trump administration – John Bolton, the national security adviser, secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser – had spoken to the Crown Prince by phone and asked for more details regarding the disappearance of the missing journalist.
Asked what advice he gave to MBS, Jared Kushner said: ‘To be fully transparent. The world is watching.… Take this very seriously.’ According to Kushner the Crown Prince’s response was an off-hand, ‘We’ll see.’
‘The reports that a Saudi-Arabian journalist may have been tragically murdered in Turkey should be deeply concerning to everyone who cherishes freedom of the press and human rights across the globe,’ weighed in Vice President Mike Pence who could congratulate himself on the fact that the Khashoggi affair had proved to be the key to pastor Brunson’s release. He promised Washington was ready to ‘assist in any way’ with the investigation. Given the US intelligence prior to the assassination, it wasn’t quite clear what this assistance would really add up to.
‘We cannot let this happen, to reporters, to anybody.’ This surprising statement came was chipped in by Donald Trump in in an unusual reversal from his ‘fake news’ approach to members of the press. ‘It’s a very serious situation for us and this White House. I want to see what happens and we’re working very closely with Turkey and I think we’ll get to the bottom of it.’ Saudi Arabia was also ordering $110 billion’s worth of American weapons.
This didn’t mean that the US government wasn’t between a rock and a hard place. Leading Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Lindsey Graham said there would be ‘hell to pay’ if the Saudis had murdered Khashoggi. ‘If this man was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, that would cross every line of normality in the international community,’ he said. ‘If they’re this brazen it shows contempt. Contempt for everything we stand for, contempt for the relationship.’
Senator Graham also blamed the Crown Prince directly, not holding his punches on Fox News: ‘Nothing happens in Saudi Arabia without MBS knowing it. I’ve been their biggest defender on the floor of the United States Senate [but] this guy is a wrecking ball. He had this guy murdered in a consulate in Turkey, and to expect me to ignore it, I feel used and abused. The MBS figure is to me toxic. He can never be a world leader on the world stage. Saudi Arabia, if you’re listening, there are a lot of good people you could choose, but MBS has tainted your country and tainted himself.’
A bipartisan group of twenty-two US senators signed a letter to Trump that triggered a US inve
stigation and determination of whether human rights sanctions should be imposed over Mr Khashoggi’s. The provisions for this mandatory investigation were in the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. This Act was one of the biggest eye sores of Vladimir Putin, as its broad injunctions against foreign individuals had been passed by US Congress further to the brutal killing of a Russian lawyer in Russian custody, trying to expose Russian corruption. It required the president to determine whether a foreign individual was responsible for a gross human rights violation. The act authorised the president to impose sanctions on foreign individuals ‘responsible for extrajudicial killing, torture, or other gross violation of internationally recognised human rights against an individual exercising freedom of expression’. It was clear that the senators had MBS in their cross hairs, as well as his team of executioners.
‘Our expectation is that in making your determination you will consider any relevant information, including with respect to the highest ranking officials in the Government of Saudi Arabia,’ the letter said.
Asked about suggestions in Congress that arms sales to the kingdom be blocked, Donald Trump replied that such a move would hurt the US economy.
‘Frankly, I think that would be a very, very tough pill to swallow for our country,’ he said pouring oil on water. There was, of course, also the future of his own Trump businesses in the Middle East to consider after his presidency.
In Istanbul, the leaks meanwhile burbled on as President Erdoğan further opened the tap to put pressure on Saudi Arabia.
Turkish investigators turned their attention to the underground garage at the Saudi consul general’s home where some of the cars that had left the consulate after Khashoggi’s disappearance had headed. The mystery of the missing security camera footage at the Saudi consulate was also solved. Turkish authorities believe that the hard drive was removed when Turkish staff at the consulate were abruptly told to take a holiday on the day Khashoggi disappeared. They believed the footage was on board one of the planes carrying the assassination squad back to Riyadh.
US intelligence was also leaking some of its intel. The Washington Post cited American intercepts showing that the Crown Prince had ordered an operation targeting Khashoggi. The paper reported unnamed US officials saying the Saudis had been heard discussing a plan to lure the journalist from his home in Virginia and detain him. Several of Khashoggi’s friends said that, over the past four months, senior Saudi officials close to the Crown Prince had called Khashoggi to offer him protection, and even a high-level job working for the government, if he returned to his home country, but Khashoggi had refused.
‘There were offers made to Jamal to return from people close to the royal family, there were quite a few from Qahtani [MBS’s Steve Bannon]. I don’t think Jamal trusted him, he had a reputation,’ said a friend. ‘It is also the case that his divorce took place partly because his wife could not cope with the propaganda being aimed at him by the government, and Qahtani, of course, was running the propaganda against all who were considered enemies.’
How well-connected and important Khashoggi really was to Saudi Arabia all of a sudden became clear when it turned out that the Crown Prince – Saudi Arabia’s ruler in all but name as his father was battling Alzheimer’s – himself no less was thought to have made at least one of the calls to Khashoggi.
A few months before the murder, Khashoggi had also had the meeting with the Crown Prince’s brother, Prince Khalid, the Saudi ambassador to the US, in what was described as a friendly meeting at the embassy in Washington where his return was also mooted. Khashoggi was visiting on a routine consular matter when he was summoned to Prince Khalid’s top-floor office, where the pair spent roughly half an hour together. And Prince Khalid was only one among a number of Saudi officials who had been contacting Khashoggi, trying to persuade him to return, claiming he would be given a warm welcome and a high-level job. But Khashoggi feared he was being lured into a trap and would be imprisoned or worse, and decided not to return.
Saudi Arabia was not a good place to be for a writer. Reporters Without Borders said between twenty-five and thirty professional and non-professional journalists were being detained there in a country where there had never been press freedom. But, while Khashoggi was ostensibly friendly with President Erdoğan, Turkey was not at all a safe place for writers either. In fact, Erdoğan’s record was worse than that of Saudi Arabia. According to advocacy group Sweden-based Stockholm Center for Freedom that tracks cases of prosecutions of Turkish journalists, Turkey had 245 journalists behind bars as of 24 January 2018, with another 140 journalists facing outstanding arrest warrants. Like Vladimir Putin from his election as Russian President 2001, Erdoğan had increasingly throttled the relatively free Turkish press since his first rise to power in 2003. Clearly there was more to the relationship between Khashoggi and Erdoğan than met the eye.
Initially Khashoggi had been informed that he could get his divorce papers from the embassy in Washington, but was then directed to the consulate in Istanbul as he intended to get married in Turkey.
‘Jamal had been to the embassy in DC several times and they had dealt with his consular issues there,’ said a friend. ‘He thought he could get the documents he needed showing he was divorced, a legal requirement, from the people in Washington. I think they told him it was a simple matter. But then they said he needed to go to Turkey to get the papers. I am not sure whether he was told about going to Turkey by people in DC or Riyadh.’ There seemed no reason for qualms at the time.
‘It just seemed at the time to be a matter of bureaucracy. But now, after what has happened, there is obviously cause for suspicion,’ the friend continued. ‘Let’s face it, they would not have dared to do what they did in Istanbul in America. They must have thought it would be much easier in Turkey to do what they planned.’
It was a good moment for Turkey to launch the next bombshell that had come into its possession.
Turkish officials now said they had an audio soundtrack of a blatant and brutal murder inside the walls of the Saudi consulate.
What was on the tape became the bedrock of the Turkish case against Saudi Arabia.
As the tape itself had not yet been leaked, attention turned to the question of how the Turkish authorities obtained the murder tape.
Turkish-government mouthpiece Sabah floated a theory that Khashoggi turned on his Apple Watch’s recording facility before entering the Saudi consulate. Then his interrogation, torture and killing were recorded and sent to his iPhone, which was with his fiancée outside the consulate, and to Apple’s iCloud. Experts determined what had happened inside the consulate from the material transmitted. Though this is technically feasible, it was thought unlikely and was merely a ruse to cover-up how the Turkish authorities had come into possession of the tape.
International speculation ranged from a bug placed in the consulate itself to a directional microphone focused on the building from outside – both technically within the realms of Turkey’s capabilities. Another possibility, being discussed in Turkey and elsewhere (and more to the point given the fact that Turkey had seemed to be totally in the dark on 2 October and in the crucial first few days of Khashoggi’s disappearance), was that some members of the hit squad recorded the abduction on their phones for trophy purposes and that those recordings were either intercepted in real time or retrieved from at least one of the killers’ phones. Russia stayed well out of the discussion.
9 ‘Tourists’
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Now that the Turkish government had dispelled any hope that Khashoggi was alive by leaking the existence of a murder tape, the media paused to consider the wider risks and perils of being a Saudi national. (Khashoggi’s elite Saudi murder squad would have done well to take note.) Khaled bin Farhan, a Saudi prince living in exile in Germany, told the Independent: ‘Over thirty times the Saudi authorities have told me to meet them in the Saudi embassy but I have refused every time. I know what can happen if I go into the embassy.’
‘Around ten days before Jamal went missing they asked my family to bring me to Cairo to give me a cheque. I refused. Many, many princes are in jail right now in Saudi. Just five days ago a group tried to visit King Salman saying they were afraid for the future of the al-Saud family, they mentioned Mr Khashoggi’s case. They were all put in jail.’
Khaled bin Farhan’s story echoed the fate of another royal, prince Sultan bin Turki, grandson of Saudi Arabia’s first king, Ibn Saud. He had vanished on the way Egypt in 2016 after criticising the Saudi regime.
‘If I disappear you know what happened to me’ was the last thing Sultan said to Bel Trew, the Middle East correspondent of the Independent.
Another of Sultan’s friends said: ‘I spoke to him before he got on the flight.… He actually joked that should he not make it, it was likely he was in Riyadh and I should raise the alarm.’
The prince was lured to Cairo, travelling on a royal private jet to see his father. But he was drugged and flown to Saudi Arabia instead. He was believed to be alive but under house arrest. His friends no longer have the means of contacting him. He had previously been kidnapped and drugged in Geneva in 2003 after calling for reform. Back in Riyadh he was held under house arrest and only returned to Europe in 2015 for medical treatment.
Saud bin Saif, a relatively minor prince who publicly backed calls for King Salman’s removal, also went missing in 2016. Khaled bin Farhan thought Saud had been tricked into getting on a Saudi-owned private jet which, instead of landing in Rome, flew on to Riyadh. Prince Turki bin Bandar, once a major in the police who took to publishing videos criticizing the regime, disappeared in 2015 after applying for asylum in France. Khaled bin Farhan believed both Turki bin Bandar and Saud may be dead. Ghanem al-Dosari, a Saudi satirist in exile in London, said he had not set foot in a Saudi embassy for nearly a decade, even though his passport expired in 2010.