It was over in minutes
Oh god.
This is awful. Be warned.
What they did to Jamal Khashoggi:
His killers were waiting when Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago. They severed his fingers during an interrogation and later beheaded and dismembered him, according to details from audio recordings published in the Turkish news media on Wednesday.
Fuckfuckfuck.
The US – and everyone else – should sever ties with Saudi Arabia this instant.
It was all over within a few minutes, the recordings suggested.
A senior Turkish official confirmed the details that were published in the pro-government daily newspaper Yeni Safak.
The leaking of such details, on the same day Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was visiting Turkey, reflected an escalation of pressure by the Turkish government on Saudi Arabia and the United States for answers on the fate of Mr. Khashoggi, a prominent dissident journalist who wrote for The Washington Post.
Hey, don’t bother Mr Pompeo, he’s very busy sharing yuks with Mohammed Bin Salman.
After he was shown into the office of the Saudi consul, Mohammad al-Otaibi, the agents seized Mr. Khashoggi almost immediately and began to beat and torture him, eventually cutting off his fingers, the senior Turkish official said.
“Do this outside. You will put me in trouble,” Mr. al-Otaibi, the consul, told them, according to the Turkish official and the report in Yeni Safak, both citing audio recordings said to have been obtained by Turkish intelligence.
“If you want to live when you come back to Arabia, shut up,” one of the agents replied, according to both the official and the newspaper.
“Horrendous tortures were committed on Khashoggi, who came to the consulate for documents,” the Yeni Safak account said.
As they cut off Mr. Khashoggi’s head and dismembered his body, a doctor of forensics who had been brought along for the dissection and disposal had some advice for the others, according to the senior Turkish official.
He told them to listen to music while they worked.
I think everyone should stop calling any part of this an “interrogation”. If it was that quick and violent, clearly they intended to torture and kill him. If they asked him a few questions during the murder, then that was apparently just incidental to the main goal.
Also, Turkey has a lot of problems, but it is to their credit that they revealed this, and it will probably be a blow to their relationship with Saudi Arabia and it compromises future intelligence gathering now they they made it known the building was bugged.
The fact that they brought in a forensics expert is damning all by itself – it shows an intent to kill and then clean the scene of the crime; a premeditated and planned murder.
What sort of music do you dismember by? I can’t even imagine the horror…or, yes, I can, but I can’t if I want to remain sane.
If Trump continues to yuk it up with MBS and not cut ties with Saudi Arabia, then he will have demonstrated to the world just what sort of monster he is – and why do I suspect that he will do just that, and not care? He has the media in this country hanging on his every word, because he is entertaining enough that ratings go up, and too much of the country seems willing to see all this as just another reality show. Nobody really gets hurt, right? It’s just staged for the benefit of the audience?
I think I died a bit inside reading this. If I had any hope left for the world, it has shriveled to nothing.
Oh yes. The forensics expert is a complete giveaway. Maddow was all over that last night. I guess the Saudis think they can do absolutely anything, because oil? And they’re probably right.
“What sort of music do you dismember by?”
For Reservoir Dogs, Tarrantino went with “Stuck in the Middle With You”
The Saudi push back is useful to consider. They’ve threatened to use their oil reserves as a weapon. Not the first time. The Saudi government controls Saudi Aramco. Obviously it’s a ploy to enrich the princes but the concept is sound. The USA is a hugely rich nation from a natural resources perspective. If strategic resources were owned by the people instead of a small number of rich white guys would we be better able to enact sound energy policies that made us less vulnerable to the whims of regimes like the Saudi royal family? Would it reduce the dangers of corporate enrichment programs like fracking? Would opponents to global climate change go away without lobby dollars to support them?
If the USA doesn’t sever ties with the Saudis, we will have lost the last shred of whatever moral authority we once had.
iknklast;
Rod Stewart’s The First Cut is the Deepest, maybe?
I guess the beheading just went too far. They only meant to behead him a little.
I wonder if Lindsay Graham had heard these details yesterday. It would explain him flipping out and refusing to go along with Trump’s “innocent until proven” guilty charade.
Although I guess it was already bad enough even without knowing the specifics.
I’ve just read that the leading murderer trained in forensic medicine in Australia. So this is what our education is used for. That might explain why such a thing was normal for the man.
This is a spectacularly blatant and disgusting murder. Let us not be too holy though – killing people by drone strike leaves civilians dead too, only rather more out of sight and perhaps deniably.
I too am amazed at Turkey’s role in exposing this. You might have expected Erdogan to sympathise with a fellow- dictator. It must be pretty bad if it’s too much even for him.
Screechy said it first:
Stuck in the Middle With You
Religion is the nightmare of my species and Saudi is playing more theaters at midnight to put us all in disgust.
The whole Erdogan issue casts another pall over this. Erdogan isn’t exactly chummy with non-Sunni Islam. He’s anti Iran, and seems to be generically pro-tyranny. Just what recordings are there, how were they obtained, and why not release them in full, at least to international security and diplomatic officials?
Indeed. I hate it that Turkey is our source for this.