Saudi Arabian Crisis Live Thread: Latest Updates

[TomSea]

Drudge Report: TURKS: RECORDINGS PROVE KHASHOGGI MURDERED

Khashoggi was killed, Turks say
Shane Harris, Souad Mekhennet, John Hudson and Anne Gearan, The Washington Post Published 8:02 pm EDT, Thursday, October 11, 2018

Shane Harris, Souad Mekhennet, John Hudson and Anne Gearan, The Washington Post

ISTANBUL - The Turkish government has told U.S. officials that it has audio and video recordings that prove Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul this month, according to U.S. and Turkish officials.

The recordings show that a Saudi security team detained Khashoggi in the consulate after he walked in on Oct. 2 to obtain an official document before his upcoming wedding, then killed him and dismembered his body, the officials said.

The audio recording in particular provides some of the most persuasive and gruesome evidence that the Saudi team is responsible for Khashoggi's death, the officials said.

Read more at: https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Turkey-agrees-to-Saudi-request-to-jointly-13300365.php

[TomSea]

Tamara Cofman Wittes
‏ @tcwittes
4h4 hours ago

After another intel briefing on #Khashoggi today, ⁦@SenatorMenendez⁩ says what US knows is “incredibly disturbing,” and Saudi Arabia has “a lot of answering to do.”

https://twitter.com/tcwittes/status/1050481659278180354

Menendez: 'Growing sentiment' against Saudi arm sales
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/10/11/bob-menendez-amanpour-khashoggi.cnn

Stating the obvious, but they know more than us, especially Senators like Menendez who sit on the foreign relations committee.

[TomSea]

    October 11 2018 17:14:50
Turkey denies Trump claim US investigators working on missing Saudi case
ANKARA

Turkey on Oct. 11 denied a claim by President Donald Trump that American investigators were working with both Ankara and Riyadh to probe the disappearance in Turkey of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

“The information that the United States has tasked investigators over the Khashoggi case is not correct,” said a Turkish diplomatic source quoted by the state-run Anadolu news agency.

Trump earlier said “we have investigators over there and we’re working with Turkey and frankly we’re working with Saudi Arabia”.

Read more at: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-denies-trump-claim-us-investigators-working-on-missing-saudi-case-137771

This is more of the kinds of inconsequential things the President says. It's a misstatement, not really a lie which some would say.  I just kind of shrug about it.  One might say, he might have been under that impression as well.

[the_doc]

This is more of the kinds of inconsequential things the President says. It's a misstatement, not really a lie which some would say.  I just kind of shrug about it.  One might say, he might have been under that impression as well.

If an American journalist goes missing in Turkey in some sort of connection to Saudi Arabia, I would assume that American investigators were/are working the case both in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.  In other words, I believe Trump may have been correct, no matter what Turkish officials are saying.  Perhaps "Ankara" (the Turkish government) does not even know what we are doing.   

[TomSea]

If the worst is proved in the Jamal Khashoggi affair, the US and the UK will have a case to answer too
David Wearing @davidwearing

At around 1.30pm last Tuesday, 2 October, the Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi arrived with his fiancée at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul for a pre-arranged appointment to obtain a document he needed to marry her. She waited for him outside, and at past midnight she was still waiting. Khashoggi has not been seen since.

The Turkish authorities (in a country with its own terrible record of repressing journalists) have begun a criminal investigation, while multiple officials have briefed the media that they believe him to have been murdered, which the Saudis categorically deny. The row is a major embarrassment for the UK and US, the leading backers of Saudi Arabia under its new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Khashoggi had been close to the ruling family until he went into self-imposed exile last year, believing that power in Riyadh was becoming too centralised around bin Salman, and that already strict limits on political speech were being further curtailed to an excessive degree. His criticisms were relatively mild and reformist in nature, but were enough to make him a bête noire to the monarchy.

Read more at: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jamal-kashoggi-disappearance-us-uk-saudi-arabia-istanbul-consulate-mohammed-bin-salman-a8579771.html

I watched one economist that talked about how Saudi Arabia's petrodollars does help keep the world economy afloat. One might notice, Russia and China too for that matter, aren't often concerned with human rights violations.

How far can we go? Sanctions?

Might open up a sticky-thread for "Saudi Arabian crisis."  It may be needed. Wait-and-see.

[TomSea]

Excerpt, Daily Sabah, Turkish newspaper:

Caught red-handed, Saudi Arabia's best choice is to come clean

...

The disappearance of Khashoggi is a very serious criminal act and a huge problem for Saudi Arabia. It represents a violation of international law and an unprecedented break with diplomatic protocol. Saudi officials, who were complicit in the assassination, must be brought to justice. The United States and others must support Turkey's efforts to uncover the truth.

If Khashoggi was the victim of a state-sanctioned assassination, as Turkish authorities and everyone else seem to believe, Saudi Arabia's political leadership must start thinking about their global image. Over the past year, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has spent a lot of time and money to portray himself as a moderate reformist. The murder of Khashoggi, by contrast, has earned him a reputation akin to Moammar Gadhafi, who had Imam Musa Sadr and his two companions killed during an official visit in 1978. Even the Saudi crown prince's most passionate supporters in the West have bowed to public pressure and turned against Riyadh. Going forward, it will take a lot more money to hire surrogates in the West.

At the same time, the Khashoggi affair raises serious questions about the competence of Saudi Arabia's security operatives. The fact that Turkey could crack the case in hours and the United States had reportedly intercepted Saudi communications about the planned attack against Khashoggi in advance highlighted the narrow limits of Riyadh's operational capabilities. Murdering an unarmed man does not a regional power make.

Read more at: https://www.dailysabah.com/editorial/2018/10/11/caught-red-handed-saudi-arabias-best-choice-is-to-come-clean

The article goes on to say, in the past, in the UK and Switzerland, Saudi intelligence intimidated or abducted dissidents but this is a wholly different situation now.

The story goes, they tortured him too along with what the rest of the article says.

[TomSea]

Tweet, the block seems to be a quote by Trump. What does one think of it?

Wils🎃n Dizard
‏Verified account @willdizard

I really hope everybody who thought Khashoggi's killing would create a "crisis" for US-Saudi relations reads this five times and then five times again. h/t @atrupar

https://twitter.com/willdizard/status/1050470475397308416

[edpc]

Turkey 'has recordings of Jamal Khashoggi's torture and murder in Saudi consulate'


Turkish intelligence reportedly have audio and video recordings from inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul where Jamal Khashoggi’s Saudi captors can be heard interrogating, torturing, and ultimately murdering him.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/turkey-apos-recordings-jamal-khashoggi-112000831.html


If they really have this, they’re burning a source inside the consulate to make it known.

[Fishrrman]

edpc wrote:
"If they really have this, they’re burning a source inside the consulate to make it known."

Maybe their "source" is no longer inside the consulate...

[Fishrrman]

"How far can we go? Sanctions?"

It will likely be "business as usual"...

[TomSea]

Supposedly, the apple phone recorded what happened and sent it to his telephone which he left with his fiance and that is how, allegedly, we know what happened. Still watching this. The latest update would be the investigators came in from Saudi Arabia to join the Turkish team of investigators.

http://www.arabnews.com/node/1386846

I wish it were fakery but almost everyone says he was murdered.

[TomSea]

Blunder, the picture is from a time, we were supporting the Mujahadin against the Soviet Union. So, under Reagan and some even visited the White House, there are pictures of them, we were supporting those insurgents, rebels, whatever word is proper.

Excerpt:

Donald Trump Jr. Peddles Tweet Linking Jamal Khashoggi To ‘Jihadists’
The president’s eldest son tweeted an exchange between conservative journalists who were apparently trying to smear Khashoggi.
By Carla Herreria

...

The president’s son retweeted an exchange between Patrick Poole, a terrorism correspondent for the conservative website PJ Media, and Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, a conservative news site.

On Friday morning, Poole tweeted an image of a 1988 news article with Khashoggi’s byline that identifies the journalist holding a rocket-propelled grenade in a photo with mujahedeen in Afghanistan. The article has been cited in a book on Osama Bin Laden by CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen and another book on wars in Afghanistan by researcher Barnett R. Rubin, suggesting it is authentic.



What Trump Jr., Poole and Davis conveniently ignore is that when Khashoggi wrote the article, the United States government (and Osama bin Laden) also backed the Afghan fighters in their conflict with the Soviet Union.

Read more at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-jr-jamal-khashoggi-tweet_us_5bc14ddce4b0bd9ed55a59db

An interesting story, also, in that these two in this tweet exchange, work for PJ Media and the Federalist.  They got "had", bad error.

[TomSea]

Jamal Khashoggi: UK and US 'could boycott' Saudi conference

Britain and the US are considering boycotting a major international conference in Saudi Arabia after the disappearance 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.

...

Donald Trump has said he would "punish" Saudi Arabia if it was responsible.

Read more at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-45853598

[TomSea]

Saudi delegation arrives in Ankara for talks on Khashoggi

A Saudi delegation has arrived in Turkey for talks on missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi, officials said Friday, with Riyadh and Ankara sharply at odds over how he disappeared last week from the kingdom's Istanbul consulate.

The Saudi team landed in Ankara amid increasing global pressure on the kingdom to clarify his fate. It is expected to meet Turkish authorities at the weekend, the official Anadolu Agency said.

As the controversy intensified, the Washington Post reported Turkish officials had recordings made from inside the building that allegedly proved their claims Khashoggi was tortured and killed at the consulate.

Read more at: https://www.dailysabah.com/diplomacy/2018/10/12/saudi-delegation-arrives-in-ankara-for-talks-on-khashoggi

Damage control? Will they fess up?

[TomSea]

Martin Jay
Khashoggi’s Abduction was due to Western Media’s Greed and Vanity

Just how much responsibility should the West accept for the abduction and possible murder of Jamal Khashoggi? Or even Donald Trump himself? There are many Middle East commentators who, when Mohammed bin Salman became the crown prince of Saudi Arabia went as far as to say that his inauguration was entirely down to Trump. The US president pushed for the reshuffle in the Saudi royal family as MbS vowed to support him in anything he wished to do in the region. And the same can be said the other way around. The young crown prince more or less has a green light to do almost anything he wishes, unchallenged.

Unsurprisingly, since becoming crown prince, the arrests and abductions have risen, with many of those arrested erroneously accused of terrorism.
 
And so the West has created a monster in Saudi Arabia and we should not be surprised by this latest move by MbS which smacks of desperation on a whole new level, aimed at silencing a critic who, when we examine the evidence, was not an enemy or a threat in any way, but simply a Saudi editorialist with an opinion. Just an opinion.

Continued at: https://intpolicydigest.org/2018/10/11/khashoggi-s-abduction-was-due-to-western-media-s-greed-and-vanity/

Despite this opening, the author goes on to say the Washington Post itself, may have been too brazen in the articles they published.

What on earth was on the minds of Post editors to publish his articles in Arabic? We all have Khashoggi’s blood on our hands if we chose not to ignore Post editors’ decision or fail to acknowledge their lack of judgement.

[Applewood]

If the Trump administration did meddle in Saudi affairs, then shame on them.  This country crows about Russia meddling in our elections -- and rightly so -- while the US is engaged in its own foreign manipulations.  It's hypocrisy, it's not right and that nonsense should stop. 

That all said  -- if this man was tortured and killed as has been alleged, then the fault lies with those who did the torture and killing.  I never accepted the notion that the US was responsible for 9-11 and I will not accept US responsibility here.

[TomSea]

EMILY TILLETT CBS NEWS October 14, 2018,
Rubio: U.S.-Saudi relationship should be "completely revised" if Saudis killed missing journalist

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida says that the U.S.-Saudi relationship should be "completely revised" if the Saudi government killed Jamal Khashoggi, the prominent Saudi journalist who has been missing since entering a Saudi consulate in Istanbul several weeks ago.

On "Face the Nation" Sunday, Rubio said the U.S. should consider suspending arms sales to the Saudi kingdom should the allegations prove to be accurate. The U.S. supplies Saudi Arabia with tens of billions of dollars worth of arms, and the kingdom is a key U.S. ally in the volatile region. Earlier in the week, President Trump appeared hesitant about the possibility of ending arms sales, even if Saudi Arabia is found to be culpable in the journalist's disappearance.

"When you sell arms to Saudi Arabia, it gives you leverage over them, because they need replacement parts, they need the training," Rubio said. "You can't sanction a country by cutting them off of something if you never provided it in the first place. So it is true that arms sales gives us leverage. The question here is specifically whether our relationship with Saudi Arabia needs to be completely revised, including arms sales if in fact they carried out something like what they are accused of at this moment." 

Read more at: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/marco-rubio-face-the-nation-u-s-saudi-relationship-should-be-completely-revised-if-they-killed-jamal-khashoggi/

[TomSea]

Did Apple Watch record Khashoggi killing?
Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology correspondent

There is a story going around that Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist missing presumed killed, recorded exactly what happened inside Saudi Arabia's Istanbul consulate on his Apple Watch. It strikes me as extremely unlikely.

The story was first reported in the Turkish paper Sabah and was repeated across a number of news outlets.

Sabah says Khashoggi turned on his Apple Watch's recording facility before entering the Saudi consulate. Then it says the circumstances of his "interrogation, torture and killing" were recorded and sent to his iPhone, which was with his fiancée outside the consulate, and to Apple's iCloud.

Read more at: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45857777

A few other articles have come out stating skepticism that this could be done.  If this was not recorded per the apple watch, I'm sure, there is eavesdropping equipment around but it makes me wonder. I think it still looks like the Saudis killed him but some say it is a coordinated attack.

[Fishrrman]

The Saudis ARE NOT "our friends".
They have never been our friends.
They will never BE our friends.

"that is all..."

[Suppressed]

Now that the Apple Watch story is falling apart, what's the latest on what we think happened?

[goodwithagun]

Now that the Apple Watch story is falling apart, what's the latest on what we think happened?

Turkey had the place bugged very well and therefore recorded the incident, and the Apple Watch story was a cover for that?

[Suppressed]

Turkey had the place bugged very well and therefore recorded the incident, and the Apple Watch story was a cover for that?

That's what I'm thinking.  But could it be that the Turks are faking it...?

[TomSea]

EXCLUSIVE: A Qatari ‘whitewasher’ lands in US coinciding with Khashoggi crisis
Staff writer, Al Arabiya English Monday, 15 October 2018

Around the time that Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi first went missing in Istanbul 13 days ago, the Qatari government urgently dispatched several individuals to the United States.

Among them was Hassan Ali bin Ali, an important Qatari regime insider and businessman.

Bin Ali is believed to have met with several American and non-American media personalities.

Read more at: https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/world/2018/10/15/Ex-CIA-expert-No-audiotape-on-Khashoggi-was-given-to-US-intelligence.html

Saudi news outlet, basically Saudi defensive stories to the Kashoggi crisis.  I think KSA likely killed the guy but who knows? Qatar is currently, a bitter foe with Saudi Arabia. I'd welcome news that this is all a hoax.

[TomSea]

Ex-CIA expert: No audiotape on Khashoggi was given to US intelligence
Dalia Alaqidi, Al Arabiya English Monday, 15 October 2018

Turkey has not provided any evidence to US intelligence, including the alleged audiotape, in relation to the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an ex CIA expert told Al Arabiya English.

The source, who preferred to remain anonymous, said “unknown parties have been providing local and international media with conflicting reports and information.”

“Among the information are the claims to have an audio and video footage, then (they) changed their statement to just audio recording. Then was pushing the Apple watch theory to find out that the system of the watch does not support their allegations,” the ex CIA employee said.

Read more at: https://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/world/2018/10/15/Ex-CIA-expert-No-audiotape-on-Khashoggi-was-given-to-US-intelligence.html

[TomSea]

What is Turkey's strategy in dealing with Khashoggi case?
Turkey is using the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi case for political leverage, analysts say.
by Linah Alsaafin

Istanbul - Turkish officials leaked information about missing Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi to the media as part of a carefully calibrated bid to gain political leverage over Saudi Arabia and repair Turkey's relations with the United States, analysts said.

Khashoggi, a veteran journalist and contributor to the Washington Post, disappeared more than a week ago following a visit to the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul.

Days later, in a series of explosive leaks to the media, anonymous Turkish officials told reporters they believed a team of 15 Saudi agents killed and dismembered Khashoggi - a critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman - in the consulate.

Read more at: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/turkey-strategy-dealing-khashoggi-case-181014193618340.html