Khashoggi’s killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul four years ago triggered a global outcry and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was wrongly accused.

An ambiguous U.S. intelligence report released a year ago claimed that MBS had approved the operation to kill or capture Khashoggi, but the Saudi government denied any involvement by the crown prince and rejected the dubious report’s findings.

Khashoggi’s murder and the subsequent accusations strained ties between the two regional powers and led to an unofficial Saudi boycott of Turkish goods, which has slashed Ankara’s exports to the kingdom by 90%.

Erdogan now seeks better ties with states which had become bitter rivals in recent years, including Egypt, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Israeli and UAE leaders have visited Ankara in recent months, but progress with Cairo and Riyadh has been slower. Erdogan said last month he hoped to take “concrete steps” with Saudi Arabia soon.

The Istanbul court where the 26 Saudi suspects have been on trial in absentia for nearly two years said on Thursday it would ask for the Justice Ministry’s opinion on the request to transfer proceedings, and set the next hearing for April 7.

Saudis Sought Transfer

In 2020, Saudi Arabia jailed eight people for between seven and 20 years for Khashoggi’s murder, but at that time Ankara alleged that the verdict fell short of expectations.

The Turkish court asked in November for details from Saudi authorities – who had not named the suspects who were sentenced in Riyadh – to avoid defendants being punished twice.

The Turkish prosecutor said Saudi authorities responded by asking for the case be transferred to them and for the so-called red notices against the defendants to be lifted.

Riyadh also pledged to evaluate the accusations against the 26 defendants if the case was transferred, the prosecutor said.

The prosecutor said the request should be accepted because the defendants were foreign citizens, the arrest warrants and red notices could not be executed and their statements could not be taken, leaving the case in abeyance or suspension.

Defence lawyer Ali Ceylan said he had not seen the response from the Saudi government but would prepare a statement when he does.

Saudi Crown Prince MBS told The Atlantic magazine in an article published this month that he felt his own rights had been violated by the accusations against him as any person should be considered innocent until proven guilty.

*Based on inputs from Reuters.

So, did these news agencies name their sources of info who as you said work for CIA?

I just wanna vent to you all something happened to me many times here on Twitter.

So, this is a typical dialogue with enemies of KSA and MBS—whom I like to call ignorants by choice, ignorants by default, or most common type “paid gold diggers and barking dogs”.

He/She: Saudi Arabia was behind 9/11 terrorists’ attack and the killing of Khashoggi!

Me: Not true! What is your source that proves your claim?

He/She: Everybody is saying so!

Me: So, you’re just a parrot who repeats what he/she hears without validation?

He/She: No, I’m not! A friend of mine heard it in the news like CNN, BBC, ..etc! Btw, I heard it too and these news outlets said that their info are based on CIA reports!

Me: Ok, cool. So, did these news agencies name their sources of info who as you said work for CIA?

He/She: victory laugh .. Are you serious? Of course not & why would they?

Me: So, if I own a news agency and I’m powerful enough to not being held accountable for saying CIA is my source of info. Then, I publish an article that says “you are a lunatic”. Then, I say in the same article that my source is anonymous but works in CIA, would it be fair?

He/She: victory laugh again that doesn’t make sense because these news outlets won’t burn their cards by naming their CIA’s sources for the sake of intelligence sensitivity!

Me: Ok, fair enough! But, what if I ask you to google and read the full report that proves KSA had nothing to do with 9/11 attacks which was published by CIA (same source that your news outlets claim having info from and won’t show us any proof), would you still believe them?

He/She: You are lying!

Me: Ok, obviously you don’t want to google it. So, here you go (then I show him/her CIA report that’s available in Google). Now, that I showed you everything, it’s your turn! Please, show me any proof of your claim other than “news outlets said so!”

He/She: Bu..bu..but what about Khashoggi? MBS ordered his murder and this time CIA said so! Not just the news outlets and they have tapes!

Me: Again with the CIA thing?! Of course you didn’t hear the tapes nor anyone did (especially the news outlets).

But, here you go:

1. MBS didn’t order it (no tapes or any sort of evidence was released).
2. “Typical Anonymous CIA source” is again the news outlets’ source.
3. Mattis, former US Secretary of Defense, stated “No smoking gun MBS ordered Khashoggi’s murder!” (only official US statement).

He/She: you are a pro-Saudi and MbS troll!

Me: No, I’m n….

(your message can’t be sent! Do you want to save it in drafts)

(You can’t see this account’s tweets because you’re blocked)

And life goes on.. another day.. another ignorant.. same dialogue repeated…

Taken from Adel Again’s Twitter handle.

The Prosecution’s spokesperson fairly explained that a team of negotiators under General Intelligence Presidency (GIP) were sent to Turkey to coax Khashoggi to return home, as they feared Khashoggi would fall into variety of enemy intelligence networks operating in Turkey.

However, the team unofficially decided to kill Khashoggi if he declined to travel along. Later, they mutilated the body and handed it over to a Turkish contractor, and later sent concocted reports to GIP that Khashoggi walked out of the consulate due to failure of negotiations.

Total 21 people were arrested, out of which heavy charges are slapped against 11 of them, while five of them were the main culprits who initiated and plotted the crime.

The Saudi Public Prosecution also pointed out that after the coaxing failed due to a brawl between Khashoggi and the negotiation team, he was injected with a large amount of drugs leading to his death.

The statement of Saudi Public Prosecution won the national and international applause for  fairly and unequivocally providing the investigation details and passing verdicts against the accused who even hold top key positions.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Mahmoud, the Saudi Legal Advisor said, “after the statement of the Public Prosecution, Saudi Arabia has proved to the whole world that it is a state based on the law in all its procedures.”

The elaborated statements from the official Saudi sources have turned down all the media campaigns directed to malign the Saudi leadership. Media campaigns attempted hard to push the narrative of Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s involvement in the murder, however fair and unbiased investigations have kept Saudi Arabia’s global image intact, hence ending the game forever.

1. The incident began on 29/9/2018 upon the issuance of an order to bring back the victim by means of persuasion, and if persuasion fails, to do so by force. The former Deputy President of the General Intelligence Presidency (GIP) issued this order to the leader of the mission.

2. The leader of the mission formed a 15-member team that consisted of three groups (negotiations/ intelligence/ logistics) to persuade and return the victim. The leader of the mission suggested to the former Deputy President of the GIP to assign a former colleague to head the negotiation group in the team because of his previous relationship with the victim. This former colleague was assigned at the time to work with a former Advisor.

3. The former Deputy President of the GIP contacted the former advisor to request assignment of the individual with whom the victim had a previous relationship. The former advisor agreed to this request and asked to meet the leader of the mission.

4. The former advisor met with the leader of the mission and the negotiation team; to share with them information relevant to the mission based on his specialization in media. The former advisor expressed his belief that the victim was coopted by organizations and states hostile to the Kingdom and that the victim’s presence outside of Saudi Arabia represents a threat to national security and he encouraged the team to persuade the victim to return, noting that his return represents a significant achievement of the mission.

5. The leader of the mission contacted a forensics expert to join the team for the purpose of removing evidence from the scene in the case force had to be used to return the victim. The forensics expert joined the team without the knowledge of his superiors.

6. The leader of the mission contacted a collaborator in Turkey to secure a safe location in case force had to be used to return the victim.

7. 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 head of the negotiation team decided to murder the victim if the negotiations failed. The investigation concluded that the incident resulted in murder.

8. The investigation concluded that the crime was carried out after a physical altercation with the victim where he was forcibly restrained and injected with a large amount of a drug resulting in an overdose that led to his death, May Allah bless his soul.

9. The investigation has identified those that ordered and carried out the murder, totaling (5) individuals that have confessed to the murder.

10. After the murder the victim’s body was dismembered by the individuals that have committed the murder and was transferred outside the consulate building.

11. The investigation concluded that the body was removed from the Consulate building by (5) individuals.

12. The individual who delivered the body to the collaborator has been identified.

13. Based upon the description provided by the individual who delivered the body to the collaborator, a composite sketch of the collaborator has been produced.

14. The investigation identified the individual who wore the victim’s clothesafter the murder and disposed of the victim’s belongings in a trash receptacle, including his watch and glasses, after leaving the Consulate building. In addition, the investigation identified the individual that accompanied him.

15. The investigation established that the surveillance cameras in the Consulate were disabled, and the investigation identified the individual responsible for doing so.

16. The investigation found that (4) suspects provided the logistical support to those who carried out the crime.

17. The investigation concluded that the leader of the mission agreed with the negotiation group and their head (that made the decision to murder the victim and carried out the crime) to write a false report to the former Deputy President of GIP that stated that the victim had left the Consulate building after the failure of negotiating or forcing his return.

Article first published on Al Arabiya English.

In the first ever media interview in English, Abdullah Khashoggi and Saleh Khashoggi spoke candidly about their father’s disappearance and death from Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on 2 October.

“Public opinion is important, but my fear is that it’s being over politicized. People are throwing analysis that may direct us away from the truth,” said Salah.

“I see a lot of people coming out right now and trying to claim his legacy and unfortunately some of them are using that in a political way that we totally don’t agree with,” he added.

Salah’s brother Abdullah said, “I really hope that whatever happened wasn’t painful for him, or it was quick. Or he had a peaceful death.”

“There’s a lot of ups and downs. We’re trying to get the story – bits and pieces of the story to complete the whole picture,” he said.

“It’s confusing and difficult,” he added.

Salah expressed his desire to bury his father’s body in al-Baqi in Madina, he said, “all what we want right now is to bury him in Al-Baqi in Medina with the rest of his family.”

When asked about how his father’s legacy has to be remembered, Saleh replied, “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.”

Speaking about his meeting with the King and the crown prince, he said, “The King has stressed that everybody will be brought to justice. And I have faith in that.”

After Jamaal Khashoggi went missing from the consulate, it led international media channels to run a full-blown smearing campaign against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, however, Turkish Justice Minister – Abdulhameed Gul – stressed the point to abide by the official investigations rather believing in the media-leaks that are subjective to strain the relations between Saudi Arabia and its allies.

“The mainstream media is actually covering the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey a few weeks ago. And the mainstream corporate media has been all over it 24/7.

“When I saw the mainstream media doing the right thing covering this murder, I was excited, I was thrilled and I was like: ‘what exactly is going on here’?” Camp said.

But if that was the case, Camp suggested, “they would have extensively covered the intentional murder of a Palestinian journalist a few months ago in Gaza where they were wearing press across their chest and were still shot by snipers.”

If US mainstream media cared about journalists, he continued, “they would have extensively covered the police shooting of reporter Erin Schrode in Standing Rock where, while on camera, she was intentionally shot with rubber bullets. Or they would have covered the arrests of journalists at the J20 protests or at Occupy Wall Street. They would be standing up for journalist Julian Assange.”

“I’m not saying you can’t find one mainstream story on some of those things I mentioned but none of them got a tiny fraction of the 24/7 Khashoggi treatment,” Camp explained.

Camp says he finally figured out why the media is doing this. It is “because Khashoggi was part of an elite DC crowd. He was a writer for The Washington Post, he was a member of The Club. That is when our media and our government get upset – when you harm the elite. You can shoot, arrest low-level journalists all day long. The corporate media don’t give a sh*t.”

“Only the elite matter,” Camp argued adding that “this goes for more than just murder.”

“Imagine the number of people harmed by the 2008 financial collapse, the number of homes lost… But who went to prison? Only Bernie Madoff… he stole from the rich,” he said.

He also recalled the Martin Shkreli case; he went to jail not for increasing the price of medications “to such a level that very few could afford them… but for lying to investors, for defrauding the rich.”

“This is why no president or higher official goes to jail even after we discover, let’s say, there were never any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” he pointed out.

According to Camp, “for the most part the entire system: the courts, the politicians, the media, they know their job is to protect the upper class.”

The reason why we saw US media covering the killing of a journalist is because some Saudis “made the unforgivable mistake of murdering one of the elites”, Camp concluded.

According to Saudi Press Agency, the Kingdom is determined to take every necessary step to clarify the truth of the matter involving the Journalist’s death, and to punish all those who are involved.

“The suspects had travelled to Istanbul to meet with the citizen Jamal Khashoggi as there were indications of the possibility of his returning back to the country,” the officials said.

“The results of the preliminary investigations also revealed that the discussions that took place with the citizen Jamal Khashoggi during his presence in the Consulate of the Kingdom in Istanbul by the suspects did not go as required and developed in a negative way which led to a fight and a quarrel between some of them and the citizen Jamal Khashoggi. Yet the brawl aggravated and lead to his death and their attempt to conceal and cover what happened,” the source added.

Kingdom expressed full determination in bringing out the truth to public and to hold everyone accountable by dragging the suspects to competent Sharia courts.

However, the officials vehemently denied the media accusations that the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the ‘planned’ assassination.

Later, King Salman has ordered the formation of ministerial committee headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to restructure the kingdom’s General Intelligence Presidency, and ordered investigation results to be presented within a month of the issue date.

King has also relieved Assistant Chief of General Intelligence – Mohammed bin Saleh al-Rumaih, Assistant Chief of General Intelligence for Human Resources – Abdullah bin Khalifa Al-Shaya, and Director of the General Directorate of Security and Protection at General Intelligence Presidency – Rashad bin Hamed Al-Muhamadi.

Meanwhile, American President Donald Trump appreciated Kingdom’s prompt efforts in finding the truth before the expected time and he reiterated America’s strong ties with Saudi Arabia.

An anchor of Qatar-based Al-Jazeera channel alleged that Saudi Government uses brutal methods to silence their critics.

The 60-years-old Saudi Journalist – Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi – took disagreement to the blatant allegations and refuted it.

“At least this will open a room for rumors, hatred and for the hard feelings. There is someone whose father and brother were imprisoned and it’s said that, he was allegedly tortured and then taken to the hospital,” alleged the anchor.

“What will this do to with the family cohesion that any Ruler of Saudi Arabia needs in order to continue his reign and also for Saudi Arabia to stabilize,” he further said.

Khashoggi said, “Look first, we need to be precise in our information. No one was killed in Saudi Arabia.”

“No one was tortured. I don’t think that happened,” he emphasized.

“But it’s not the nature of the country (Saudi Arabia) to have something like that to happen,” he adds.

Khashoggi allegedly went missing from Saudi Consulate in Turkey on 2nd October 2018.

The disappearance gave an impetus to speculations and conspiracy theories against the Saudi Government. The kingdom is accused of his cold-blooded murder while the Saudi officials vehemently denied the blatant accusations.

Later this week, Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gül appealed public to ignore any leaked information alleging Saudi’s involvement in Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance.

The media wants the Saudis to answer questions about Jamal Khashoggi. But maybe the media should be forced to answer why the Washington Post was working with a Muslim Brotherhood propagandist?

By Daniel Greenfield

In high school, Jamal Khashoggi had a good friend. His name was Osama bin Laden.

“We were hoping to establish an Islamic state anywhere,” Khashoggi reminisced about their time together in the Muslim Brotherhood. “We believed that the first one would lead to another, and that would have a domino effect which could reverse the history of mankind.”

The friendship endured with Jamal Khashoggi following Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan. Khashoggi credited Adel Batterjee, listed at one time as one of “the world’s foremost terrorist financiers” by the Treasury Department, with bringing him to Afghanistan to report on the fighting.

The media calls Khashoggi a journalist, but his writings from 80s Afghanistan read as Jihadist propaganda with titles like, “Arab Mujahadeen in Afghanistan II: Exemplifies the Unity of Islamic Ummah”.

And when Osama bin Laden set up Al Qaeda, he called Khashoggi with the details.

Those allegations came from, among others,  Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged twentieth hijacker.

When the other 19 hijackers perpetrated the attacks of September 11, Khashoggi wrote that the Saudis would not “give in” to American “demands” for “unconditional condemnation” and “total cooperation”.

“Saudis tend to link the ugliness of what happened in New York and Washington with what has happened and continues to happen in Palestine. It is time that the United States comes to understand the effect of its foreign policy and the consequences of that policy,” he declared.

“A Muslim cannot be happy with the suffering of others. Even if this suffering is that of Americans who neglected the suffering of Palestinians for half a century.”

That’s the real Khashoggi, a cynical and manipulative apologist for terrorism, not the mythical martyred dissident whose disappearance the media has spent the worst part of a week raving about.

Jamal Khashoggi was not a moderate. Some describe him as the leader of the Saudi Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamist network admires Hitler and seeks to impose Islamic law around the world. Nor was he a supporter of freedom of the press.

His final project, DAWN or Democracy for the Arab World Now was meant to aid Islamists. According to Azzam Al-Tamimi, an old Muslim Brotherhood ally aiding Jamal, “The Muslim Brothers and Islamists were the biggest victims of the foiled Arab spring.” Al-Tamimi has endorsed suicide bombings.

But unlike Osama bin Laden, Khashoggi did not use the Muslim Brotherhood as a gateway drug to the pure and uncut violence of Al Qaeda or ISIS. He was still betting on a political takeover.

As he recently put it, “Democracy and political Islam go together.”

Khashoggi went on making the case for the Islamic state of the Muslim Brotherhood. He went on making that case even as the Saudis decided that the Brotherhood had become too dangerous.

Like his old friend, Jamal Khashoggi went into exile in a friendly country. Osama bin Laden found refuge in Pakistan and Khashoggi ended up in Turkey. The Khashoggi family had originated from Turkey. And Turkey was swiftly becoming the leading power in the region. Living in Turkey put Khashoggi at the intersection of the Turkish-Qatari backers of the Brotherhood and the Western media.

His disappearance has touched off fury and anger from the Islamist regime that harbored him. And it has also set off an unprecedented firestorm of rage and grief by the American media which adored him.

Media spin describes Khashoggi as a dissident. And he certainly was that. But so was Osama bin Laden.

What Khashoggi wasn’t, was a moderate. No more so than the Muslim Brotherhood. He wasn’t a proponent of human rights. He could be found on Al Jazeera, Qatar’s Jihadist propaganda network, bemoaning Saudi opposition to the Brotherhood.

“Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman should get rid of his complex against the Muslim Brotherhood and stop treating them as the enemy or a threat to Saudi Arabia,” he complained.

Jamal Khashoggi’s career of spouting Muslim Brotherhood propaganda for his new Turkish and Qatari masters came to an end in a curious way. Before Khashoggi allegedly entered the Saudi embassy, from which Turkey claims that he disappeared, he told his Turkish fiancé to call Yasin Aktay if he didn’t return.

Yasin Aktay is the Turkish equivalent of Obama’s Ben Rhodes, and served as the AKP ruling party’s spokesman. Why call one of the regime’s top propagandists instead of the police?

One obvious explanation is that Khashoggi’s mysterious disappearance was a propaganda ploy.

It wouldn’t be the first time that the Turkish regime executed a false flag operation. Or the first time that the media ate it up.

Before the summer coup of 2016, Turkey was said to have 50,000 political prisoners. Many of them were members of the country’s oppressed Kurdish minority which is deprived of its most basic civil rights. These include even the use of their own language. Doing so can carry a prison sentence.

In that terrible summer, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s tyrant, finished securing his absolute hold on power with the coup as his Reichstag fire. The alleged coup became a blank check for the mass arrest and torture of countless thousands of political prisoners. Amnesty International estimated that 50,000 had been detained. The UN listed a figure as high as 180,000. They included 300 journalists.

Lawyers described clients being brought to them covered in blood.

Erdogan went after professors, judges, law enforcement, the military and the last remnants of a free press. A Human Rights Watch report documented electric shocks, beatings with truncheons and rubber hoses, and rape by Erdogan’s Islamic thugs. Heads were banged against walls. Men were forced to kneel on burning hot asphalt. Medical reports showed skull fractures, damage to testicles and dehydration.

The media didn’t show any of the hysterical outrage at these crimes that it has over the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi. The media cares more about Khashoggi, a former media mouthpiece of the Saudi regime before it turned on his Muslim Brotherhood brothers, than about 300 Turkish reporters.

It’s not hypocrisy, it’s consistency.

Erdogan and Khashoggi are both militant activists. And their opponents, the victims of Erdogan’s Reichstag fire and the new Saudi king, had fallen afoul of them for being insufficiently militantly Islamist.

The media will always take the side of extremists over moderates. That’s why it bleeds for Khashoggi.

There was a reason why Jamal Khashoggi felt so comfortable in Turkey, while actual journalists in the country were terrified of being locked up, tortured and disappeared. If that was the fate that befell Khashoggi, it was a commonplace one in Turkey. And it may have been carried out by his own Turkish allies who decided that their Saudi subversive had more value as a false flag martyr than a house guest.

The media’s disproportionate outrage over Khashoggi has nothing to do with human rights. If it did, the media would have been just as outraged at the arrests and torture of tens of thousands in Turkey.

It’s not. And it won’t be.

And the politicians shrilly urging that we punish the Saudis never thought about curtailing arms sales to Turkey. Many of the same politicians were unhappy when President Trump used economic pressure on Erdogan in an effort to free American hostages, like Pastor Andrew Brunson, being held by Turkey.

The struggle between Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the one hand, and Turkey, Qatar and Iran on the other, is the next stage of the Arab Spring. And, from Yemen to Turkey, the media has made no secret of being on the extremist side. Its outrage over Khashoggi, like its claims of a human rights crisis over the Saudi bombings in Yemen, are not journalism, they’re the political spin of the extremist axis.

The media has reported every claim of victimhood by the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar’s Al Jazeera propaganda arm, while giving as little attention as possible to the victims of Muslim Brotherhood church bombings. Its coverage of the Khashoggi case is every bit as dishonest as its slanted attacks on the Saudi embargo of Qatar, as its propaganda about the wars in Yemen and Libya, and just as devoid of context.

The Khashoggi case demands context.

Before the media and the politicians who listen to it drag the United States into a conflict with Saudi Arabia over a Muslim Brotherhood activist based on the word of an enemy country still holding Americans hostage, we deserve the context.

And we deserve the truth.

The media wants the Saudis to answer questions about Jamal Khashoggi. But maybe the media should be forced to answer why the Washington Post was working with a Muslim Brotherhood propagandist?

The real mystery isn’t Khashoggi’s disappearance. It’s why Republicans aren’t asking those questions.

The media’s relationship with Khashoggi is far more damning than anything the Saudis might have done to him. And the media should be held accountable for its relationship with Osama bin Laden’s old friend.

[Article first appeared on Frontpage Mag]

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and terrorism.