by Owen Wilson
The Crown Prince joked that Mr Hariri would only be staying in the kingdom for two days this time – ‘so I hope you don’t spread rumours that he was kidnapped,’ he told the audience.
Hariri laughed nervously and applauded at this hilarious joke.
He had come back into favour after a leading Lebanese talk-show host was summoned to appear before Hariri in Beirut for making a joke at the expense of the Crown Prince. Associated Press reported that ‘reacting to a clip on a rival network advising bin Salman to swear off fast food for his health, Haddad suggested he should swear off “fast arrests, fast politics … fast military strikes”, instead.’
Some delegates did not join the folie à deux and did little to hide their disdain for both the crime and the subsequent attempts to cover it up.
‘These idiots have taken us back to the Stone Age,’ said one. ‘How do I defend this country to anyone anymore? The stupidity here is unparalleled.’
Others said the attempt to distance bin Salman from the slaying and blame it on his closest personal staff was doomed, but that they were forced to go along with it.
‘It suits many of us to believe this, because the alternative is just too impossible,’ said a Saudi businessman. ‘But anyone who has lived here understands the fiction. And his friends outside cannot be expected to look away like us.’
Another said: ‘This is very complicated. It is painful for the family and for the people. It is best to live in denial here.’
Abroad the Crown Prince’s condemnation of the murder of Khashoggi was seen as disingenuous.
It emerged that, in the days following the assassination, MBS had told both Jared Kushner and US National Security Advisor John Bolton that Khashoggi was a dangerous Islamist and a member of the banned Muslim Brotherhood. It was a gambit that always worked wonders in the US.
‘It will be harder under MBS to have the same degree of confidence we can work with Saudi Arabia in light of the brutal murder of Khashoggi,’ said a former top western intelligence official – although it wasn’t clear whether the word confidence applied to Congress not finding out about agreeable assassinations.
On 25 October, Saudi Arabia changed its explanation of Khashoggi’s death yet again.
Now, it had no longer happened accidentally during a fistfight with rogue operatives. Yes, officials confirmed, the butchering operation had been planned. The Saudi attorney general Saud al-Mojeb issued a statement on state television, saying: ‘Information from the Turkish side affirms that the suspects in Khashoggi’s case premeditated their crime.’
The Saudi announcement came hours after CIA director Gina Haspel, while on a fact-finding trip to Turkey, had listened to excerpts from the audio tape which showed that Khashoggi was tortured before he was killed.
‘The public prosecution continues its investigations with the accused in the light of what it has received and the results of its investigations,’ the attorney-general said.
His new words were not taken very seriously either as Turkey alleged that an additional two members of the Saudi team had been sent to clean up the crime scene.
‘We believe that the two individuals came to Turkey for the sole purpose of covering up evidence of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder before the Turkish police were allowed to search the premises,’ a senior Turkish official told the Independent. ‘The fact that a clean-up team was dispatched from Saudi Arabia nine days after the murder suggests that Khashoggi’s slaying was within the knowledge of top Saudi officials.’
Now that they were both out of the country, Khashoggi’s two sons appeared to speak out a little bit more freely. They described their father as ‘courageous, generous and very brave’. Thirty-five-year-old Salah told CNN: ‘We just need to make sure that he rests in peace. Until now, I still can’t believe that he’s dead. It’s not sinking in with me emotionally. It’s not a normal situation, it’s not a normal death at all. All what we want right now is to bury him in Al-Baqi [cemetery] in Medina with the rest of his family. I talked about that with the Saudi authorities and I just hope that it happens soon. It’s an Islamic tradition. It’s a basic humanitarian issue.’
Thirty-three-old Abdullah added: ‘I really hope that whatever happened wasn’t painful for him, or it was quick. Or he had a peaceful death.’
Asked how his father should be remembered, Salah said: ‘As a moderate man who has common values with everyone… a man who loved his country, who believed so much in it and its potential. Jamal was never a dissident. He believed in the monarchy, that it is the thing that is keeping the country together. And he believed in the transformation that it is going through.’
The brothers also said their father was ‘like a rock-‘n’-roll star’ when they were out with him in Saudi Arabia because of his career as a celebrated writer.
But in reality, their words about Khashoggi’s (undoubted) belief in the monarchy etc. bolstered the Saudi government’s latest script that this was all-rogue-gone-terribly-wrong.
The most significant new information was that his younger son now confirmed he knew Hatice Cengiz. In fact, he knew her rather well. Abdullah said his father’s Turkish fiancée was making him happy. He was the last of Khashoggi’s four children to see their father when he was alive. He said: ‘We hung out in Istanbul. We had fun. I was really lucky to have a last moment with him. I feel very grateful.’
Despite the allegations that the Crown Prince had ordered the assassination, older brother Salah also reaffirmed his loyalty to the Saudi regime.
‘The king has stressed that everybody involved will be brought to justice. And I have faith in that. This will happen. Otherwise Saudi Arabia wouldn’t have started an internal investigation,’ he said.
Khashoggi’s two daughters, Noha and Razan, later paid tribute to their father in the Washington Post, vowing that ‘his light will never fade’. They called him ‘Baba – a loving man with a big heart’ and chimed in with their brothers.
The put their finger on the mysterious reason for the assassination. ‘In truth, Dad was no dissident. If being a writer was ingrained in his identity, being a Saudi was part of that same grain,’ they wrote, emphasising his passionate love of his homeland. ‘It was vitally important to him to speak up, to share his opinions, to have candid discussions. And writing was not just a job; it was a compulsion. It was ingrained into the core of his identity, and it truly kept him alive.’
They recalled their childhood, when the famous writer would allow them to rifle through his paper-stuffed office.
‘We loved it when he took us every weekend to the bookstore,’ they wrote. ‘We loved looking through his passport, deciphering new locations from pages covered with exit and entry stamps.… As children, we also knew our father as a traveller. His work took him everywhere, but he always returned to us with gifts and fascinating stories. We would stay up nights wondering where he was and what he was doing, trusting that no matter how long he was gone, we would see him again, wide-armed, waiting for a hug. As bittersweet as it was, we knew from a young age that Dad’s work meant that his reach extended far beyond our family, that he was an important man whose words had an effect on people over a great distance.’
They recalled visiting him in Virginia during Ramadan in 2017. ‘Dad… told us about the day he left Saudi Arabia, standing outside his doorstep, wondering if he would ever return. For while Dad had created a new life for himself in the United States, he grieved for the home he had left. Throughout all his trials and travels, he never abandoned hope for his country.’
They returned to his home in Virginia after his death. ‘The hardest part was seeing his empty chair,’ they said. ‘His absence was deafening. We could see him sitting there, glasses on his forehead, reading or typing away. As we looked at his belongings, we knew he had chosen to write so tirelessly in the hopes that when he did return to the kingdom, it might be a better place for him and all Saudis. This is no eulogy, for that would confer a state of closure. Rather, this is a promise that his light
will never fade.’
Back in Saudi Arabia, the Crown Prince was trying to build up support in the ruling family by finally releasing Prince Khaled bin Talal, a nephew of King Salman, leading to speculation that other high-profile detainees would also be freed. Prince Khaled was a brother of billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, owner of The Savoy and Eurodisney, who had been temporarily detained in an anticorruption shakedown at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh. After Khashoggi’s murder, the once flamboyant financier Talal dispensed effusive praise for Saudi Arabia’s crown prince during a television interview, though he looked ‘visibly uncomfortable’, the Financial Times said.
His brother, Prince Khaled, had been held for eleven months in al-Hayer prison, south of the capital, with dissidents and activists for criticising MBS’s reforms and his mass Ritz-Carlton detention of more than two hundred princes, ministers and businessmen held over allegations of corruption. Members of the royal family had been infuriated by the purge, which shattered decades of consensual rule, and the humbling of senior royals and powerful business magnates who were detained at the palatial five-star hotel.
Prince Khaled’s belated release came days after the return from self-imposed exile in London of seventy-three-year-old Prince Ahmed, the king’s younger brother who had been removed from succession. He was rumoured to be a possible replacement for MBS as Crown Prince. In a further attempt to limit the fallout from Khashoggi’s murder, King Salman embarked on a week-long tour of Saudi Arabia, his first domestic tour since taking the throne in 2015.
The Crown Prince claimed that only eight people were still being detained from the Ritz-Carlton shake-down, but the Washington Post put the figure closer to forty five. Despite MBS’s claim, oppression was not easing. New regulations were introduced to control the media. They were intended to protect public order, strengthen national unity, preserve the social fabric, and preserve values and virtues, the government said. Women working in media must also comply with Islamic dress codes.
MBS wants just ‘one voice’, said Yahya Assiri, a UK-based activist. ‘In the past there could be some criticism with red lines for the media, but now there’s just one line, one voice, repeating MBS and that’s it,’ he said.
Despite torture of Saudi guests at the Ritz-Carlton, Riyadh, its staff was named ‘Hotel Team of the Year’ and its general manager ‘Highly Commended’ at the 2018 Hotelier Middle East Awards held in Dubai.
Saudi Arabia itself was seeking to recruit London-based public relations agencies to rehabilitate its tattered international image.
14 The Tape
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Attempts to distract the world’s attention from Khashoggi’s murder were thwarted when President Erdoğan confirmed that recordings of the journalist’s torture had finally been released to the UK, US, Germany, France and Saudi Arabia. It was another shrewdly calculated move to manipulate events in his favour. Like all authoritarian leaders, Erdoğan understood the incomparable power of the media as a herd management tool and was expertly skilled in stirring its cauldron.
For weeks, Turkey had been shelling Saudi Arabia’s government with sickening snippets of its behaviour. Unlike Britain –supposedly a master in the art of diplomacy, Erdoğan had successfully forced the hand of MBS and made him look ridiculous. By handing over the recordings (though it was not clear whether all or just edited excerpts) he broadened the line of pressure on MBS. Landing a hot potato into the laps of the intelligence services of free-media countries, he ensured that the well-chewed out tape retained its media mystique and that it ended up in the hands of those who wouldn’t be able to ignore it. They would now be giving their individual responses to the recording, keeping up the pressure on MBS.
President Erdoğan said: ‘We played them to all who wanted them including the Saudis, the US, France, Canada, Germany, Britain. The recordings are really appalling. Indeed when the Saudi intelligence officer listened to the recordings he was so shocked he said: “This one must have taken heroin, only someone who takes who heroin would do this”.’
He also called on Saudi Arabia to identify the actual killer from among the fifteen-man team who had arrived in Istanbul before the murder.
‘There’s no need to distort this issue, they know for certain that the killer, or the killers, is among these fifteen people,’ he said.
President Erdoğan, furthermore, put forward his preferred method of achieving this, ‘Saudi Arabia’s government can disclose this by making these fifteen people talk.’
Inevitably more detail of the assassination was leaked. Turkish newspaper of government record, Sabah, said it had heard the tapes and claimed that Khashoggi’s words at the beginning of torturing him were: ‘I’m suffocating … Take this bag off my head, I’m claustrophobic.’
Donald Trump confirmed that the US had the tape, but expressed little interest in listening to it.
‘We have the tape, I don’t want to hear the tape. There’s no reason for me to hear the tape,’ he said. ‘Because it’s a suffering tape, it’s a terrible tape. I’ve been fully briefed on it, there’s no reason for me to hear it. I was told I really shouldn’t. It was very violent, very vicious and terrible.’
Others did listen to the tape and once again its contents began to leak. It was said that, soon after Khashoggi entered the consulate, he could be heard saying at the beginning of the altercation: ‘Let go of my arm. Who do you think you are? Why are you doing this?’
‘It was premeditated murder,’ Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
‘It can be heard how the forensics expert instructs the others they should listen to music while he cuts up the body. One notices how he enjoys it. He likes to cut up people. It is disgusting.’
He added that the Saudi Crown Prince ‘said he wanted the journalist silenced’ – over 384 Turkish journalists in gaol or under criminal investigation saw their own reflection – and confirmed that Khashoggi was dead within seven minutes.
President Erdoğan said again that it was clear the murder had been planned and that the order had come from the top level of Saudi authorities. He also said could not think such a thing of King Salman, for whom he has ‘limitless respect’.
On the day of the Khashoggi-sons’ conciliation meeting with King Salman in October, the Turkish head of state had also gone out of his way not to embarrass the head of state of Saudi Arabia, his peer, and instead lauded King Salman’s ‘sincerity’. This was despite the fact that he had billed his speech on the day as the moment he would reveal ‘the naked truth’. Erdoğan’s speech didn’t even confirm the existence of the murder-tapes, whose contents had already been widely leaked by then by Turkish officials.
It had been a diplomatic dance that was plainly aimed at unseating MBS (with whom both Jared Kushner and Donald Trump had exceptionally warm relations) from his all-powerful role in the kingdom, while not blaming Saudi Arabia as a country.
But on 13 November, for the first time, Erdoğan criticised MBS directly: ‘The Crown Prince says “I will clarify the matter, I will do what is necessary”. We are waiting patiently’. ‘It must be revealed who gave them the order to murder.’
Foreign minister Cavusoglu revealed that the Crown Prince has asked to meet President Erdoğan at the forthcoming G20 meeting in Buenos Aires.
‘At the moment there is no reason not to meet with the Crown Prince,’ Mr Cavusoglu snapped. He added that Riyadh had offered to send identikit photos of local helpers who assisted in the cover-up.
‘Why identikit pictures? The Saudis know the names,’ he said. Indeed the names of most of the collaborators had of course already been leaked to the world by the Turkish government.
Others began putting the pressure on, too, for something to give.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo phoned MBS to tell him that the US would ‘hold all of those involved in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi accountable, and that Saudi Arabia must do the same’, while British Foreign Secretary Jer
emy Hunt brought the matter up with King Salman during a visit to Saudi Arabia. Saudi prosecutor general Saud al-Mujeb revealed that by now twenty one ‘conspirators’ were in custody – although it was not possible to verify what this meant in actual fact, given the prohibition of a free press in Saudi Arabia.
The prosecutor general now told a rare press conference in Riyadh that killers had set their plans in motion on 29 September, three days before Khashoggi was murdered and the day after he had first visited the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul. The deputy chief of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence, general Ahmed al-Asiri, gave the order to repatriate Khashoggi, while the head of ‘the negotiating team’ brigadier general Mutreb that flew to the Istanbul consulate had ordered his killing.
‘After surveying the consulate, the head of the negotiation team concluded that it would not be possible to transfer the victim by force to the safe location in case the negotiations with him to return failed,’ the prosecutor said. ‘The head of the negotiation team decided to murder the victim if the negotiations failed.’
Prosecutor general Saud al-Mujeb went on to absolve MBS, insisting that the crown prince had nothing to do with the operational cockup that led to Khashoggi’s death. Everything had been done and dusted at the speed of a Saudi quill, and no wonder that King Salman duly praised the Saudi judiciary for exonerating his son.
However, the game of leaks to the media continued.
The New York Times reported that shortly after the assassination a member of the kill team said, in a hacked phone call – clearly not hacked by The New York Times itself but leaked – to his superior: ‘The deed is done – tell your boss.’ The words were uttered by hit-squad leader Mutreb and it was added that American intelligence officials believe ‘your boss’ was Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
While Mutreb’s former colleague was being slaughtered alive, at least three outside calls were placed by Mutreb and during the last one he said calmly ‘Tell yours, the thing is done, it’s done.’ The word ‘yours’ in Arabic is taken to mean a senior or a boss. In addition to the videotaping of the whole thing so that Riyadh had proof that orders had been carried out correctly, Khashoggi’s fingers would also be delivered as concurrent proof for al-Qhatani’s chief that all had gone well.