Jamal Khashoggi and Munir Said Thalib both died in autumn. Human rights activist Munir, 39, was found dead on a plane on Sept. 7, 2004, while the journalist Khashoggi, 59, was killed in cold blood inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.
The Saudi Arabian journalist had been invited to pick up paperwork, leaving his fiancee waiting outside the building, only to find at least 15 security agents waiting. He was strangled to death, according to a Turkish prosecutor. His body was cut up with a bone saw by a forensic expert in the team — reportedly in just “seven minutes.”
A heinous crime. The implications are politically severe and wide ranging, both regionally and globally. Turkey revealed the evidence bit by bit to escalate pressure as the Saudis attempted to cover it up. It took them two weeks before they admitted that Khashoggi had been killed.
Four weeks on, a United Nations rapporteur said the killing must have been authorized and the Saudi chief prosecutor spoke of premeditated acts.
All sides — except the Saudis — finally concluded that the death squad must have been instructed by a higher authority. But where are Khashoggi’s remains? The smoking gun is missing.
A high-level political assasination connected to geopolitical dynamics is classic; it inspired the legendary philosopher Nicollo Machiavelli who lived in the 16th century era of Italian city-states.
Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher, suggested that the state should be able to take action to maintain an orderly social life.
It is a Leviathan task because a predator state relies on “force and fraud” to ensure it.
Khashoggi and Munir are victims of the predator state. Munir was a human rights defender, tough and respected; Khashoggi a seasoned columnist for The Washington Post.
They were not dissidents, at least not openly. Khashoggi had even been close to the House of Saud for some time. Neither were they radicals — although Khashoggi seemed sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, which politically opposes the Saudi’s Wahabbi conservative strain of Islam.
Both worked toward a strong democracy. Munir, focused on the military and abuses in conflict zones, and sharply criticized its role in the state and society.
Khashoggi wanted to break down the desert kingdom’s “iron curtain”. In his last column, he criticized the Arab states that imprisoned journalists and wanted to build a non-governmental platform to advance freedom of expression.
Both had thus “crossed the line”. Munir’s activities led to the fall of a key general, if not more. A good friend of Khashoggi’s said his phone had been hacked because he was presumably concerned about the Saudi’s role in the war in Yemen.
Khashoggi is a dangerous element, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud, also known as MBS, reportedly warned the United States shortly before the Saudi prosecutor said he was killed.
Hobbesian “force and fraud” came into effect when Munir had his drink poisoned and when Khashoggi was fatally misled.
The fact, however, that the killings were premeditated, involving security agents answering to intelligence tsars, point to the likelihood that both cases will remain unresolved.
The crown prince’s three bodyguards were identified as among those who arrived at the consulate the same day as Khashoggi. No one believes the prince will be held accountable.
Moreover, Turkey and Saudi Arabia remain at loggerheads because the Saudis refuse to extra- dite the 18 suspected killers and the Turks are keeping the evidence to themselves.
In Munir’s case, too, the indictments mentioned the role of the state intelligence apparatus, BIN, citing its leaders, but the deputy intelligence chief, Muchdi Purworprandjono, was acquitted. His boss AM Hendropriyono had repeatedly denied involvement.
Ongen RL, the preacher-singer who is believed to have been with Munir in a café at Changi Airport, mysteriously died before he was about to speak out in May 2012.
True justice might never be served despite the fact, among others, that the convicted off-duty Garuda Indonesia pilot, Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, hours after meeting Munir at Changi, had contacted Muchdi several times. According to the testimony of a BIN official, Pollycarpus’ message was: “I’ve got the big fish, Pak!” He is now free.
Even former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who promised to resolve what he said was “a test of history” failed to safeguard the state-appointed fact-finding team’s report. Instead, his government admitted that the report had vanished, leaving his successor with the unresolved issue.
One thing that made Khashoggi’s killing distinct from other suspected extra-judicial killings like that of Munir is the political environment.
Like Saudi Arabia, Turkey is a close ally of the US, yet it competes with the Saudis and Iran to lead the Muslim world.
US President Donald Trump, the most Saudi-centric president in recent history, holds the delicate balance as the kingdom wants to undermine Iran, on which Turkey’s economy, now in crisis, depends on for oil. For Trump, the Middle East should be guarded by the US, the Saudis and Israel.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made it clear that the responsibility for Khashoggi’s killing rests with Saudi Arabia at the highest levels — but not with the king, he added.
A key figure here is Saudi’s de facto leader, MBS, who since 2015 holds a strategic command over the economy, defense, security and regional politics.
A young reformer at 33, he became a controversial figure when he detained a number of dignitaries at a luxury hotel, took Lebanon’s then-prime minister, Saad Hariri, hostage, led the war in Yemen war and initiated Qatar’s blockade last year. Israel and Egypt, in line with the US, however, have warned that dethroning the crown prince would destabilize the region.
The Khashoggi killing should lead to global action to end the Saudi-Gulf coalition’s aggression in Yemen and the huge arms deal with, among others, the US and the United Kingdom.
The war against the Iran- supported Houthi rebels has brought the country to the brink of starvation, with tens of thousands children having died of hunger. In Yemen, death in autumn means a humanitarian catastrophe. Life there, to borrow Hobbes’ famous dictum, has become “poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
