It’s a long-known staple of dictatorships, through history up to this day:
Nobody, NObody, can criticize the ones in charge.
And that’s exactly what Jamal Khashoggi did for a living.
A month after his departure from the kingdom, Khashoggi’s view of M.B.S. [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman] fundamentally changed. Saudi security services arrested scores of prominent businessmen and imprisoned them inside the Ritz-Carlton under the guise of an “anti-corruption” crackdown. Khashoggi soon began hearing from friends in Saudi Arabia that prisoners were coerced, in some cases tortured, into turning over billions of dollars to the government. “It was tough. Some were insulted. Some were hit. Some claim they were electrocuted,” he said. The purge, which also included intellectuals, media personalities, and moderate clerics, convinced Khashoggi that M.B.S. had sold himself as a reformer when in fact he was a brutal authoritarian. “When the arrests started happening, I flipped. I decided it was time to speak,” he told me.
Khashoggi subsequently landed a column in The Washington Post where he wrote critically about M.B.S.’s internal power grab; his reckless military intervention in neighboring Yemen, where he has created a humanitarian emergency; and the prince’s bizarre plot to kidnap Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri. “Saudi Arabia wasn’t a free society, but people weren’t being arrested like this,” he said. “The people M.B.S. arrested were not radicals. The majority were reformers for women’s rights and open society. He arrested them to spread fear. He is replacing religious intolerance with political closure.” An adviser to one prominent Saudi businessman who was arrested told me: “People are scared. It has become a bit of a police state.”
And it seems to’ve cost him his life.
Tragically, Khashoggi’s self-imposed exile didn’t keep him safe. Earlier this month, Khashoggi entered Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents he needed for his upcoming wedding and never emerged. Turkish officials have told Western journalists that a kill team of 15 Saudi agents detained Khashoggi inside the consulate, tortured him to death, and dismembered his body with a bone saw.
His death was horrifying, both for its blatancy and its brutality.
The steel of any of those who don that press badge and walk into the war zone cannot be overstated, but the chill this incident has cast over the speaking of truth to power is almost palpable.
Due in large part to the response of the “leader of the free world.”
Just when he might step up and show some global leadership defending our Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees, Trump has reportedly said in regard to Prince bin Salman’s involvement in Khashoggi’s murder, in so many words:
Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t.