Why Jamal Khashoggi’s murder still haunts US-Saudi ties

WASHINGTON - On Nov 18, US President Donald Trump hosted Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House.

Mr Trump, eager to attract investment and boost ties with the oil-rich kingdom, said the kingdom’s de facto ruler “knew nothing about” the 2018 murder
of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. 

“A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about,” Mr Trump said after being asked about Mr Khashoggi while sitting with the crown prince, known as MBS, in the Oval Office.

“Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen, but (MBS) knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that.”

Mr Khashoggi, formerly one of Saudi Arabia’s best-known journalists, was living in self-imposed exile in the US when he vanished after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct 2, 2018.

Turkish officials said he was killed inside.

After initially denying it, the Saudi government admitted he died there, first claiming a fight broke out before later saying a team sent to persuade him to return to the kingdom had killed him. The Saudi authorities charged 11 people in the case.

Saudi Arabia has denied that MBS had any role in Mr Khashoggi’s killing. However, a US intelligence report in 2021 implicated the crown prince in his death. 

Why was Khashoggi so prominent?

Mr Khashoggi, who was 59 at the time of his death, was a leading critic of Saudi Arabia’s current leadership, sharing his views via platforms including opinion columns in the Washington Post, which were translated into Arabic.

His journalism career included stints in Afghanistan, where he met and followed the rise of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in the 1980s.

He was deputy editor-in-chief of the Saudi newspaper Arab News at the time of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the US, which made him a valuable source for foreign journalists seeking to understand what drove the men behind the attacks into such actions. 

In the 2000s, he was twice fired from his post as editor-in-chief of the Saudi Al-Watan daily newspaper, which under his leadership ran stories, editorials and cartoons critical of extremists and the way in which the country enforced its religious values.

Saudi newspapers are privately owned but government-guided, and the government approves and can fire top leadership.

Why was he so well known outside Saudi Arabia?

In part because, in between his Al-Watan stints, he was an adviser to the Saudi ambassador to London, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, a former long-serving intelligence chief.

Then, in 2005, when the prince was appointed the Saudi envoy to the US, Mr Khashoggi joined him as a media aide. 

Mr Khashoggi left the kingdom for exile in the US in June 2017 and became a Washington Post columnist.

Why did he go into exile?

He told friends and reporters that the space for freedom of speech under the crown prince was shrinking and he feared for his safety.

In an appearance on Al Jazeera TV’s Upfront that aired in March 2018, he said he had left the kingdom “because I don’t want to be arrested”.

On the worsening environment for journalists since MBS took over, he said: “I got fired from my job twice because I was pushing for reform in Saudi Arabia. It wasn’t that easy, but people were not being put in jails. There was a breathing space.”

What did he write?

Mr Khashoggi did not see himself as a dissident, but as a critic worried about the direction his country was going under its young crown prince.

In his first Washington Post column on Sept 18, 2017, he wrote about his decision to leave Saudi Arabia: “I have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice. To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison. I can speak when so many cannot. I want you to know that Saudi Arabia has not always been as it is now. We Saudis deserve better.”

Mr Khashoggi wrote in February 2018 that MBS maybe “should learn from the British royal house that has earned true stature, respect and success by trying a little humility himself. If MBS can listen to his critics and acknowledge that they, too, love their country, he can actually enhance his power”.

In one of his last columns, he urged MBS to end the war he started in Yemen: “The longer this cruel war lasts in Yemen, the more permanent the damage will be. The people of Yemen will be busy fighting poverty, cholera and water scarcity and rebuilding their country. The crown prince must bring an end to the violence and restore the dignity of the birthplace of Islam.”

Why did he enter a Saudi consulate?

To finalise paperwork for his wedding to Ms Hatice Cengiz, a 36-year-old Turkish doctorate student.

He had recently bought an apartment in Istanbul so the couple, once married, could divide their time between Turkey and the US.

What happened after his death?

Eventually, after several conflicting statements about what had happened inside the consulate, the Saudi authorities charged 11 people in the case, including former deputy intelligence chief Ahmed al-Asiri.

Former royal court adviser Saud al-Qahtani, a top aide to MBS, was removed from his position. 

Then in December 2019, eight people were found guilty of his murder, and five were sentenced to death.

The death sentences were later commuted to 20-year prison terms after Mr Khashoggi’s son announced that his family had forgiven the killers.

Mr Al-Asiri was found not guilty and Mr al-Qahtani was cleared due to insufficient evidence.

Saudi Arabia’s deputy prosecutor said the murder was not premeditated.

An earlier report by Dr Agnes Callamard, a United Nations expert who investigated Mr Khashoggi’s death, said Saudi agents had been recorded by the Turkish authorities discussing how to dismember Mr Khashoggi’s body several minutes before he had entered the consulate, referring to him as a “sacrificial lamb”.

What was the international reaction?

Mr Khashoggi’s murder drew global condemnation, bruising the reputation of MBS and prompting bipartisan efforts in US Congress to limit arm sales to the kingdom.

Dr Callamard said the murder bore all the characteristics of a “state killing” and the investigation conducted by the Saudi authorities did not meet international standards. 

Why did US intelligence conclude that MBS was implicated in the murder? 

The declassified US intelligence report concludes that MBS “approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill” Mr Khashoggi.

This conclusion was informed by the finding that the crown prince holds “absolute control” over Saudi security and intelligence apparatuses.

The involvement of a “key adviser” and members of MBS’s elite personal protective detail, as well as the crown prince’s “support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad”, led US intelligence to assess that the operation would not have happened “without the crown prince’s authorisation”. BLOOMBERG