By James North, Mondoweiss
Bin Salman: Saudi Arabia’s new strongman. Now widely seen as a murder suspect. That’s not counting his crimes in Yemen.
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.
The vile Thomas Friedman: Not the exception, but the rule at the NYTimes and other major US media.
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:
Maximus Decimus Meridius // ENDORSED BY THE EDITORS
October 7, 2018, 12:05 pm
“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?
October 8, 2018, 9:44 am
Mohammed bin Salman is typical of many spoiled rotten Saudis I met during my years in the region. He’s a gutless, not very bright, disgusting, murderous slime ball being played like a violin by Trump and the entity known as “Israel.” The “Arab street” views him as a traitor.
His character was well demonstrated just a few months ago when he blew well over one $billion U.S. buying a painting, a massive new home and a huge yacht.
Here’s the link to a just published Al Jazeera article re Jamal Khashoggi:
EXCERPT:
“Profile: Jamal Khashoggi: Saudi writer missing in Turkey.”
“Prominent journalist Khashoggi is feared dead after his October 2 disappearance inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.”
“Jamal Khashoggi is one of the most prominent Saudi and Arab journalists and political commentators of his generation, owing to a career that has spanned nearly 30 years.”
SELECTED COMMENTS
Maximus Decimus Meridius // ENDORSED BY THE EDITORS
“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?
Misterioso
Mohammed bin Salman is typical of many spoiled rotten Saudis I met during my years in the region. He’s a gutless, not very bright, disgusting, murderous slime ball being played like a violin by Trump and the entity known as “Israel.” The “Arab street” views him as a traitor.
His character was well demonstrated just a few months ago when he blew well over one $billion U.S. buying a painting, a massive new home and a huge yacht.
Here’s the link to a just published Al Jazeera article re Jamal Khashoggi:
EXCERPT:
“Profile: Jamal Khashoggi: Saudi writer missing in Turkey.”
“Prominent journalist Khashoggi is feared dead after his October 2 disappearance inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.”
“Jamal Khashoggi is one of the most prominent Saudi and Arab journalists and political commentators of his generation, owing to a career that has spanned nearly 30 years.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
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Atlantaiconoclast
October 7, 2018, 12:23 pm
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).