A critic of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Khashoggi was living in self-imposed exile in the US and writing opinion pieces for the Washington Post before he vanished. He visited the consulate last Tuesday to obtain a document confirming he had divorced his ex-wife to allow him to remarry. Turkish officials have said he was killed on the premises and his body removed.
He has not been seen since.
The authorities in Istanbul believe he was murdered there by Saudi agents – claims Riyadh has dismissed as “lies”.
Turkish sources have told media outlets they believe the Saudi writer and critic was killed inside the consulate in what they describe as “premeditated murder”. Saudi officials have countered that claim, insisting Khashoggi left the building before vanishing.
Donald Trump has said he would “punish” Saudi Arabia if it was responsible. He said the case is “not looking too good”. In a CBS interview that there would be “severe punishment” for Saudi Arabia if it turns out that Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Trump said in an interview for 60 Minutes that there was much at stake with Khashoggi case, “maybe especially so” because he was a reporter. Trump also said the US would be “punishing itself” if it halts military sales to Saudi Arabia, even if it is proven that Khashoggi was killed inside the country’s consulate in Istanbul.
Turkey’s top diplomat has reiterated a call to Saudi Arabia to allow Turkish authorities to enter the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Saudi Arabia had not yet cooperated with Turkey on the search for Khashoggi. He said that Turkish “prosecutors and technical friends must enter” the consulate “and Saudi Arabia must cooperate with us on this”.
Developments
Britain and the US are considering boycotting a major international conference in Saudi Arabia after the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the BBC has learned. Mr Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government, vanished on 2 October after visiting its consulate in Istanbul.
A number of sponsors and media groups have decided to pull out of this month’s investment conference in Riyadh, dubbed Davos in the Desert, as a result of concerns over Mr Khashoggi’s fate.
Meanwhile claims that his ordeal was recorded and stored on the cloud through his Apple Watch, has been questioned by technology experts.
The Guardian reports that “the UK must reconsider its relations with Saudi Arabia if the state is found to have ordered the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a senior MP has said. Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, said the UK should work with its allies on its response to claims Khashoggi was killed during a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Tugendhat said it was important to establish the facts, but that if Riyadh had murdered Khashoggi or sanctioned his killing there should be a downgrading of diplomatic relations and a boycott by UK ministers. Saudi Arabia faces a chorus of international calls to shed light on what happened to the Washington Post columnist, and business leaders have already shunned the regime.”
The UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, said he wanted to know the truth about what had happened and expressed concern that such disappearances would happen more regularly and become a “new normal”. Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times, announced that the newspaper would pull out of its partnership in a high-profile economic conference in Riyadh, and Sir Richard Branson has frozen several business links with the country.
Tugendhat said the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, should boycott the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh later this month if Saudi involvement in Khashoggi’s disappearance was proved. “The first thing for us to do is for us to get together with our allies, the United States, the Europeans and others, to discuss very seriously what’s going on,” Tugendhat told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “The idea that we can treat Saudi as a normal state if it practises state-sponsored murder outside its borders is simply not true.
“We may be talking about downgrading diplomatic relations, we may be talking about restricting support for certain areas.” The Department for International Trade said: “The secretary of state’s diary is yet to be finalised for the week of 22 October. We will update on his activity in due course.”
Guterres told the BBC: “We need to have a strong request for the truth to be clear. We need to know exactly what has happened and we need to know exactly who is responsible and, of course, when we see the multiplication of this kind of situation I think we need to find ways in which accountability is also demanded.”
Based on reports on Al Jazeera / Reuters / CNN / The Guardian
