Turkije: Journalist vermoord in consulaat #3

quote:

Op maandag 3 december 2018 08:19 schreef polderturk het volgende:
https://twitter.com/nbcsnl/status/1069091269618671616

Vladi Daddy

nav de CIA breefing gisteren “There’s not a smoking gun but a smoking saw.”

Saudi crown prince Salman ‘complicit’ in Khashoggi murder: US senators

Two key US Republican senators said a briefing on Dec. 4 by the CIA’s director only strengthened their conviction that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince directed the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The explosive new declarations by members of President Donald Trump’s own party run counter to the White House narrative downplaying possible links between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the October killing of journalist and palace critic Khashoggi at the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate.

“I have zero question in my mind that the crown prince directed the murder and was kept appraised of the situation all the way through it,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker told reporters after CIA director Gina Haspel briefed a small group of senators.

“If MBS were in front of a jury, he’d be convicted in less than 30 minutes,” Corker said, using the prince’s initials.

The crown prince is “crazy” and “a wrecking ball” who is “complicit in the murder of Mr Khashoggi to the highest level possible,” Graham said in withering criticism of an American ally.

“There’s not a smoking gun but a smoking saw.”

een fascinerend reportage over hoe de saudisch gebruik maakten van de onervarenheid van jared kushner, om hun eigen agenda te promoten oa. door zichzelf bij kushner te promoten als een bastion tegen "islamic extremisim"

het verklaart ook deels waarom de amerikanen zo invested zijn in saudi en met name MBS, die zij hebben gesteund in de strijd om het verkrijgen van de kroonprins status.

The Wooing of Jared Kushner: How the Saudis Got a Friend in the White House

Senior American officials were worried. Since the early months of the Trump administration, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser, had been having private, informal conversations with Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the favorite son of Saudi Arabia’s king.

Given Mr. Kushner’s political inexperience, the private exchanges could make him susceptible to Saudi manipulation, said three former senior American officials. In an effort to tighten practices at the White House, a new chief of staff tried to reimpose longstanding procedures stipulating that National Security Council staff members should participate in all calls with foreign leaders.

But even with the restrictions in place, Mr. Kushner, 37, and Prince Mohammed, 33, kept chatting, according to three former White House officials and two others briefed by the Saudi royal court. In fact, they said, the two men were on a first-name basis, calling each other Jared and Mohammed in text messages and phone calls.

The exchanges continued even after the Oct. 2 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was ambushed and dismembered by Saudi agents, according to two former senior American officials and the two people briefed by the Saudis.

As the killing set off a firestorm around the world and American intelligence agencies concluded that it was ordered by Prince Mohammed, Mr. Kushner became the prince’s most important defender inside the White House, people familiar with its internal deliberations say.

Mr. Kushner’s support for Prince Mohammed in the moment of crisis is a striking demonstration of a singular bond that has helped draw President Trump into an embrace of Saudi Arabia as one of his most important international allies.

dit is eigenlijk voor het eerst dat een motief voor de moord zo gedetaileerd wordt beschreven

"This is a ghastly murder story, but as in any complicated case, we look for clues about how and why the killing took place. This killer’s motive was control of information."


How a chilling Saudi cyberwar ensnared Jamal Khashoggi

Khashoggi, as one of Saudi Arabia’s best-known journalists and leading “influencers,” was inexorably drawn into this conflict. As Qahtani beamed up his “army of flies” to combat Qatar on Twitter, Khashoggi’s friends wanted to create an alternative media presence.

Omar Abdulaziz, a young Saudi dissident living in Canada, encouraged Khashoggi in June and July of this year to help recruit a rival army of “electronic bees” to neutralize the Saudi online onslaught, according to a lawsuit filed in Tel Aviv last Sunday.

Khashoggi and Abdulaziz didn’t realize that the Saudis were able to spy on their messages, thanks to Israeli-supplied Pegasus surveillance tools, according to the lawsuit. The complaint alleges that two of Abdulaziz’s brothers were arrested in Saudi Arabia late last summer; one of the imprisoned brothers, pressured by his captors, “begged [Abdulaziz] to stop his work on political activities in which he was involved,” the suit contends. The Pegasus surveillance gave the Saudis information that “contributed in a significant manner to the decision to murder . . . Khashoggi,” the suit alleges.
.....
For Qahtani, the anti-Khashoggi campaign was personal. A Saudi official told me that Qahtani felt that he had let down his boss, MBS, by allowing Khashoggi to leave Saudi Arabia in 2017. When Khashoggi fled to the United States later that year and began writing columns for The Post that were critical of Saudi Arabia, Qahtani viewed him as a renegade enemy in the information domain he sought to control.

Just before Khashoggi began writing for The Post, some Saudi officials offered him a column in the pro-Saudi newspaper Al-Hayat, according to two Saudi officials who were briefed on the proposal. But Khashoggi soon began his Post columns, augmenting his voice in social media. The Saudis tried to squeeze him by preventing his son Salah from traveling outside the kingdom, which deeply upset Khashoggi, but he didn’t temper his writing or his independence.

Last July, according to a U.S. official, Qahtani had convinced MBS that Khashoggi was a threat to the kingdom’s attempts to control information, and the crown prince sent a message that month ordering that the renegade journalist be brought back to the kingdom, by force if necessary. The message wasn’t understood by U.S. officials until too late.

Transcript van de audio van de moord is bij CNN terechtkomen


'I can't breathe.' Jamal Khashoggi's last words disclosed in transcript, source says

(CNN) — "I can't breathe." These were the final words uttered by Jamal Khashoggi after he was set upon by a Saudi hit squad at the country's consulate in Istanbul, according to a source briefed on the investigation into the killing of the Washington Post columnist.
The source, who has read a translated transcript of an audio recording of Khashoggi's painful last moments, said it was clear that the killing on October 2 was no botched rendition attempt, but the execution of a premeditated plan to murder the journalist.
During the course of the gruesome scene, the source describes Khashoggi struggling against a group of people determined to kill him.

De eerste stappen van het internationale onderzoek zijn eindelijk gezet.


The killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s Istanbul Consulate was “planned and perpetrated by Saudi officials,” the UN special rapporteur said on Feb. 7.

Agnes Callamard recently visited Turkey with a team of experts on an international inquiry into Khashoggi’s murder.

“Evidence collected during my mission to Turkey shows prime facie case that Mr. Khashoggi was the victim of a brutal and premeditated killing, planned and perpetrated by officials of the State of Saudi Arabia,” Callamard was quoted as saying in a statement.

“Turkey’s efforts to apply prompt; effective and thorough; independent and impartial; and transparent investigations - in line with international law - had been seriously curtailed and undermined by Saudi Arabia,” she said.

“Woefully inadequate time and access was granted to Turkish investigators to conduct a professional and effective crime-scene examination and search required by international standards for investigation.”

She added Khashoggi’s murder was the “gravest violation” of the most fundamental of all rights, the right to life.

The killing violated “both international law and core rules of international relations, including the requirements for lawful use of diplomatic missions,” according to the statement.

“Guarantees of immunity were never intended to facilitate the commission of a crime and exonerate its authors of their criminal responsibility or to conceal a violation of the right to life. The circumstances of the killing and the response by State representatives in its aftermath may be described as ‘immunity for impunity’,” Callamard said.