Ian Birrell

Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination was one of the century’s blackest farces

The gruesome murder caused international outrage, and bungled Saudi efforts to deny responsibility compounded the horror

The story of Jamal Khashoggi’s death is well known. A prominent Saudi journalist, he walked into his nation’s consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 to obtain divorce papers permitting him to marry his fiancée Hatice Cengiz. Eighteen minutes later, he was drugged and then murdered by

a hit squad sent from Riyadh. After another six minutes, a bone saw brought in by a forensic doctor was heard chopping up the body, although the parts were never found. The killers, all senior intelligence figures, returned home in private jets.

This act of savagery, which showed stunning contempt for diplomatic norms, rightly sparked an international storm. Khashoggi, a well-known character in Arab circles, had started writing columns for the Washington Post from his new home in Virginia, and his criticism of the Saudi regime had become more vigorous. The murder team failed to detect cameras monitoring those entering and leaving the consulate, ensuring Riyadh’s claims that Khashoggi had left the building quickly fell apart.

These sordid events make for a decent read in this book by Jonathan Rugman, a foreign affairs specialist with Channel 4 News, which is aided by the incredible amount of intelligence data leaked about the case. Saudi efforts to cover their tracks, which included constantly changing their story and denying Turkish police access to their consulate for a fortnight, were farcical. A senior officer was brought along as a lookalike to put on Khashoggi’s still-warm clothes before strolling around the Blue Mosque grounds as a decoy — yet failed to change his identifiable trainers.

Khashoggi emerges as an emotional figure, weaving his way through the complex politics of the Saudi court before falling out with the ascendant young crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. Desperately lonely in exile, he walked into a trap, due to pressure to prove he was divorced from his third wife by his new fiancée’s family.

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