It was a brutal way to go, and it had the paw prints of the highest authorities. On October 2, 2018, Jamal Khashoggi,
the Saudi Arabian insider turned outsider, was murdered by a squad of 15 men from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He was
dismembered and quite literally cancelled in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
This state sanctioned killing was a vile, clumsy effort against a journalist and critic of a person who has come to be
affectionately known in brown nosing circles as MBS, the ambitious, bratty Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Since then,
every effort has been made on his part, and his followers, to repel suggestions of guilt or involvement.
It is worth remembering how the narratives were initially developed. First, the killing was denied as a libel against
the kingdom. “Mr Khashoggi,” claimed an official statement from the Saudi authorities, “visited the consulate to request
paperwork related to his marital status and exited shortly thereafter.” Then, his death was accepted, but deemed the
result of a dreadful accident in which the men in question had overstepped. The death subsequently became the work of a
blood thirsty gang of sadists who had acted on their own volition or, as US President Donald Trump called them, “rogue
killers”.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir was a model of dissembling grace, telling news networks that it had all been a
“tremendous mistake” which the Crown Prince was “not aware” of. “We don’t know, in terms of details, how. We don’t know
where the body is.”
Statements of this nature run the risk of being totally implausible while also being revealing. It certainly showed a
level of audacity. But in the exposure of the operation, the Saudi intelligence services also risked looking amateurish
and startlingly incompetent. As a reward for their activities, 11 of the crew were tried by the Saudi government, eight
of whom were convicted of murder. Their names have never been released.
Investigations into the murder are generally of the same view: the operation was authorised by the Crown Prince or
certainly someone in the highest reaches of the Saudi government. The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or
arbitrary executions, Agnès Callamard, thought as much. In June 2019, the rapporteur published a report finding that the
execution “was the result of elaborate planning involving extensive coordination and significant human and financial
resources. It was overseen, planned and endorsed by high-level officials. It was premeditated.”
The latest publication to stack the shelves of the Kingdom’s culpability comes in the form of a declassified US
intelligence report submitted to Congress by the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines. The authors of the
short document are clear about the lines of responsibility. “We assess,” goes the Executive Summary, “that Saudi
Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist
Jamal Khashoggi.” This conclusion was arrived at given the role of the Crown Prince in “the decision making in the
Kingdom”, the participation “of a key adviser” along with members of bin Salman’s protective detail, and his “support
for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi.”
Sombrely, the compilers of the report can only state the obvious. “Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control
of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have
carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization.”
The details of the report corroborate other findings. The team sent to Istanbul had seven members of Muhammad bin
Salman’s protective guard, the Rapid Intervention Force. It would have been hard to envisage the participation of these
men in an operation without approval of the Crown Prince. Members of the squad also included those from the Saudi Centre
for Studies and Media Affairs (CSMARC) based at the Royal Court.
The only note of slight uncertainty to come in the report is the state of mind Saudi officials were in terms of harming
Khashoggi. It was clear that the Crown Prince saw the journalist “as a threat to the Kingdom and more broadly supported
using violent measures if necessary to silence him.” What was less clear that “how far in advance Saudi officials
decided to harm him.”
The neglected, and no less obscene aspect of the Khashoggi affair apart from his extrajudicial killing, is the business
as usual approach taken by various powers towards Saudi Arabia. President Trump was merely the frankest of them all, not
wishing to cloud lucrative weapons deals and the ongoing security relationship. “The United States,” he promised in a
statement, “intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all
other partners in the region.”
The Biden administration prefers dissimulation and forced sincerity. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saw the need
to “recalibrate” rather than “rupture” the relations between the two countries. “The [US] relationship with Saudi Arabia
is bigger than any one individual.” It was sufficient for the US to illuminate the issue of Khashoggi’s killing. “I
think this report speaks for itself.”
Just to show he has been busy recalibrating away, Blinken announced a visa restriction policy named after the slain
Saudi – the Khashoggi Ban. Some 76 Saudi nationals have received bans for having “been engaged in threatening dissidents
overseas, including but not limited to the Khashoggi killing.”
Ahead of the report’s release, President Joe Biden called his Saudi counterpart, King Salman, making much of human
rights and the rule of law. But doing so did not mean holding the Crown Prince to account for his misdeeds. What
mattered was “the longstanding partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia”. The Royals, to that end, can
rest easy. There will be no substantial change in the arrangements between Washington and Riyadh, merely a heavy
layering of cosmetics. That’s recalibration for you.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Email: bkampmark@gmail.com