Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 33-year-old de facto leader of Saudi Arabia widely praised as a “reformist” by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and others, turns out to be a suspected murderer.
Here’s what happened: 5 days ago, Jamal Khashoggi, a one-time Saudi insider who became a prominent critic and self-exiled in Washington, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to get a document he needed to re-marry. His fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, said he never emerged.
The Washington Post reports that Turkish investigators now believe that a 15-member murder team sent in from Saudi Arabia killed Khashoggi inside the consulate. There have been further reports that his body was dismembered before being removed.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman lied in an interview with Bloomberg, saying Khashoggi had left the Istanbul consulate soon after he arrived.
Jamal Khashoggi, 59 years old, had contributed regularly to the Washington Post’s Global Opinions section, edited by the excellent Karen Attiah. After his disappearance, she wrote:
Jamal is one of the leading proponents of freedom and democratic change throughout the [Mideast] region, and he frequently denounces the harsh tactics deployed by the Saudi authorities against prominent clerics, business owners, female activists and social media figures. I ask him from time too time if he is okay, if he is feeling safe. He insists that he feels the need to write, despite the pressures from the Saudi authorities.
Khashoggi bravely criticized the Saudi war against Yemen, in which tens of thousands of civilians have already died from air attacks and a cholera epidemic.
The likely murder of Khashoggi is a stunning rebuke to Thomas Friedman and to the American business leaders and officials who feted the Saudi Crown Prince during his visit to the U.S. earlier this year, who included President Trump, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, George W. Bush, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
Friedman and the others affectionately nicknamed bin Salman “MBS,” after his initials, in a further effort to humanize him.
Friedman’s unerring instinct for terrible analysis didn’t desert him during his visit to Saudi Arabia last November, when he stayed up half the night interviewing bin Salman and then gushed, “The most significant reform process underway anywhere in the Middle East today is in Saudi Arabia. Yes, you read that right.” In a report titled “Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring, at Last,” Friedman lathered the prince with praise:
I told him his work habits reminded me of a line in the play “Hamilton,” when the chorus asks: Why does he always work like “he’s running out of time.”
“Because,” said M.B.S., “I fear that the day I die I am going to die without accomplishing what I have in my mind.
Surely bin Salman is lionized partly because he has formed a tacit alliance with Israel, with rumors of cooperation on security matters.
So now the reformist hero is exposed as a suspected killer, who ordered the death of a man who did nothing more than write newspaper columns. Over the next few days, the squirming by Thomas Friedman and others will be something to see.
Update from editor. Just as North predicted, Friedman is squirming. On twitter:
Trump, Kushner. I don’t usually tweet opinions, but here goes: you need to get the Saudis to find/release Jamal Khashoggi. Without constructive critics like him, Saudi econ reform will fail.
Another update: Here is a link to more of Jamal Khashoggi’s columns in the Washington Post:
“Khashoggi bravely criticized the Saudi war against Yemen,”
If this story is confirmed, it is absolutely horrific and utterly to be condemned. However, let’s not idealise Khashoggi. He only started to criticise the war in Yemen AFTER he fell out with the crown prince. Before that, he had publically praised it. While Khashoggi is now being hailed as a dissident, in fact he made an entire career out of serving the Saudi regime, first as an acolyte of Bin Laden in Afghanistan (when this was approved by the Saudis) then as a court scribe in the pay of a succession of high-ranking princes. When the latest of these high-ranking princes, Waleed bin Talal, fell from grace with the crown prince, so too did his minions, among them Khashoggi. Truth is, the Saudi regime has been imprisoning and killing genuine dissidents for decades, but it never bothered Khashoggi until it started to affect him personally.
As for Tom Friedman well….. since when has he not been an utter fool? It says a lot for the state of US journalism that this cretin who writes like a smart-ass school kid is considered an ‘expert’ on the Middle East by the self-styled ‘paper of record’.
“Surely bin Salman is lionized partly because he has formed a tacit alliance with Israel, with rumors of cooperation on security matters.”
Without a doubt. As any Arab leader knows, the best way to gain uncrtical coverage in the US, no matter how appalling your regime may be, is to make nice with Israel. Why bother with all those pricey PR firms?
And they have been in a moral panic over Assad doing what he had to do to save his nation from armed terrorists. But somehow, they see this thug, MBS, as a reformer. We live in a Zio supremacist clown world. If you are friendly with Israel and hate Iran, the media will really go out of its way to look past minor problems like murder (see the above piece and no telling how many other innocents killed in SA) and genocide (Yemen).
Waiting for the “Saudi” regime to collapse.Hopefully their misdeeds in Yemen will be their end.
Meanwhile, a traditional Yemeni style on these collaborating fools
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3GO3fgRcLU
It figures netanyahoo and tRUMP would be in bed with these murderous thugs.
“Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, lionized by U.S. pundits and politicians, is a — suspected murderer”
It wouldn’t surprise.
After all, his efforts at usurping power, kidnapping, ransom, suppression of dissent, and aggressive war have all been on public display.
This is the only kind of Arab leader Israel always embraces warmly as a friend.
They are comfortable with this kind of leader, which tells us a great deal. They like the Mubarak and el Sisi types and seriously dislike any democratic or even independent-thinking types among Arab Leaders.
Israel already has a de facto alliance going with this thug. They kill together in Syria.
When this “prince” first seized power, the pathetic editors at The Guardian were tripping over themselves putting out favorable snippets about miracles like a few women drivers, in the same fashion as the oleaginous and always predictable Thomas Friedman.
Meanwhile, the guy uses the vast storehouse of weapons he has bought to kill plenty of women and kids in Yemen and also among the oppressed Shia minority in his own country.
Of course, being perhaps the biggest single customer for weapons from the US and Britain and some others, he is treated with kid gloves.
He is being promoted as part of the new Mideast, those aligned with Israeli and American interests. He is helping to cement imperial arrangements with America’s Mideast colony.
He is almost always smiling in his photos, but then psychopaths are like that, aren’t they?