KASHOGGI’S DEATH: A LOT TO BEHOLD
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IFE ADEWOLE
The murder of prominent Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashogi has left a huge cloud of uncertainty over the world’s big players in the political space, as the circumstances surrounding his death leaves too much to behold.
Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian citizen, was a prominent journalist whose reformist stories was seen by the Saudi government as a threat. As a result, he left the country on self-exile in 2017 and mysteriously disappeared on 2nd October during his visit to the Saudi Consulate in Ankara Turkey.
Khashoggi had covered major stories including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the rise of Osama Bin Laden for various Saudi news organisations. For some years, he was close to the Saudi royal family and also served as an adviser to the government.
The Saudi Kingdom had not experienced real peace since the bedridden King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud appointed his son bin Salman Crown Prince in 2017. In his effort to fortify his hold on power, the Crown Prince had continued to take drastic steps against perceived enemies of the state.
Hence, Khashoggi embarked on a self-imposed exile to the US in 2017, from where he wrote a monthly column in the Washington Post in which he criticised the policies of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The journey that led to his disappearance and subsequent death according to the Saudi government started when he entered the Saudi consulate to obtain documents that would permit him to marry his Turkish fiancée in 3 October .
The next day a Saudi official insisted that Khashoggi had left shortly after getting the paperwork and that he was “not in the consulate nor in Saudi custody”.
The consulate later issued a statement saying it was working with Turkish authorities “to uncover the circumstances” of his disappearance.
The Crown Prince Mohammed’s brother and the Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Khaled bin Salman, published a letter on 8 October insisting that reports about Khashoggi’s death were “completely false and baseless”.
On 15 October After a telephone conversation between Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Donald Trump, the US president told reporters that the king had denied all knowledge of Khashoggi’s disappearance.
On 20 October, the Saudi government issued a press release following “preliminary investigations” by the Saudi public prosecution office.
It said the investigations had “revealed that the discussions that took place between (Khashoggi) and the persons who met him… at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul led to a brawl and a fist fight”.
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