Could Killing of Washington Post Writer by Saudi 'Murder Team' Finally Put Crack in US Support of 'Criminal Regime'?

Spurring fresh outrage among those who criticize the cozy relationship between the U.S. government and the Saudi monarchy—with emphasis on Crown Prince Mpolitical dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabia national living in self-imposed exile abroad, was tortured and killed last week by a Saudi government ‘murder team,’ according to Turkish sources, while inside the Saudi consulate building in Istanbul, Turkey.

“The initial assessment of the Turkish police is that Mr Khashoggi has been killed at the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul. We believe that the murder was premeditated and the body was subsequently moved out of the consulate,” one of the two Turkish officials told Reuters on Saturday. The writer, the news agency reported, entered the consulate last Tuesday to secure documents for his forthcoming marriage while his fiancee waited outside. He never came back out, she said, and has not been seen or heard from since.

Citing two people with knowledge of Turkey’s probe, the Post‘s reporting says that the 15-member Saudi hit team was sent “specifically for the murder” and that the entire thing was “pre-planned.” According to the Post:

The killing, if confirmed, would mark a startling escalation of Saudi Arabia’s effort to silence dissent. Under direction from the crown prince, Saudi authorities have carried out hundreds of arrests under the banner of national security, rounding up clerics, business executives and even women’s rights advocates. 

“If the reports of Jamal’s murder are true, it is a monstrous and unfathomable act,” Fred Hiatt, the director of The Post’s editorial page, said in a statement. “Jamal was — or, as we hope, is — a committed, courageous journalist. He writes out of a sense of love for his country and deep faith in human dignity and freedom. He is respected in his country, in the Middle East and throughout the world. We have been enormously proud to publish his writings.” 

Khashoggi may have been considered especially dangerous by the Saudi leadership, analysts said. His criticisms of the royal family and its vast powers were delivered from his self-imposed exile in the United States and could not be dismissed as the complaints of a longtime dissident.

“Unbelievable” and “WTF!!!” declared CodePink’s Medea Benjamin, a U.S. peace activist and expert on the Saudi’s human rights record, after reading the news.

“This should be the long-awaited moment for the US to totally recalibrate its relationship with this criminal regime.”
—Medea Benjamin, CodePink

If the murder happened as is being reported, Benjamin told Commons Dreams, it is “beyond belief,” but also quite easy to believe given the country’s record and that of MbS.

“It exposes the horrific nature of the Saudi regime,” she explained, “and it has the fingerprints of the crown prince all over it.  MbS, who was feted as a refreshing young reformist when he visited the United States, bombs children in Yemen with impunity. He jails women human rights activists and then declares himself a liberator of women. He imprisons and shakes down his internal rivals in an ‘anti-corruption’ drive. He kidnaps the Lebanese head of state and creates a Gulf-wide crisis by attacking Qatar. And now he has a journalist who was living in the United States, a journalist who was a mild critic, murdered on Turkish soil?”

MbS, she concluded, “is out of control and this should be the long-awaited moment for the US to totally recalibrate its relationship with this criminal regime.”

Benjamin wasn’t the only one arguing the murder should force a reckoning in terms of U.S.-Saudi relations. “If this is true – that the Saudis lured a U.S. resident into their consulate and murdered him – it should represent a fundamental break in our relationship with Saudi Arabia,” declared Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) in response.

“If true, this would be an abysmal new low,” said Amnesty International’s Middle East Research Director Lynn Maalouf. “Such an assassination within the grounds of the consulate, which is territory under Saudi Arabian jurisdiction, would amount to an extrajudicial execution. This case sends a shockwave among Saudi Arabian human rights defenders and dissidents everywhere, eroding any notion of seeking safe haven abroad.”

And journalist Shane Bauer tweeted: