Saudis admit to killing Jamal

After two weeks of shifting histories, Saudi Arabia said Saturday that its agents had strangled dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a hand-to-hand fight in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and that 18 men were arrested in this case.

Among those arrested, 15 men were sent to confront Khashoggi, as well as one driver and two consular staff, said a Saudi official.

Saudi media reported that Saud al-Qahtani, a close badociate of the Crown Prince, was removed from office, along with Major General Ahmed al-Assiri, deputy director of Saudi intelligence, and other senior intelligence officials. The Saudi official said that General Assiri had organized the operation and that Qahtani had been informed and contributed to an aggressive environment that allowed him to degenerate.

President Trump said Friday night that Saudi Arabia's statements were credible and the announcement of the arrests has proven to be a "good first step".

Trump, who has forged close ties with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, said that he would consider "a form of sanction" in response, but that he "would prefer that we n & # 39; We would not use as compensation "the cancellation of $ 110 billion in arms sales to the Saudis.

But the representative of California, Adam Schiff, did not buy the Saudi explanation. Schiff, a top Democratic leader of the House's intelligence committee, said in an interview Friday night that "if Khashoggi was fighting inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, he was fighting for his life with people sent to capture or kill him. "

Schiff, who said he had received a detailed and clbadified briefing earlier in the day on what the US spying services consider to be the circumstances, said the Saudi version "was not credible". He said he could not reveal what the intelligence agencies briefs had told him

Since Khashoggi's disappearance after entering the consulate on October 2, Saudi Arabia has given varying explanations explaining his disappearance, all of which seemed to remove senior officials from responsibility.

The Saudis first claimed that Khashoggi had left the post. The consulate was alive and pretended to be worried about his fate, hinting later that the killing could have been done by rogue agents.

But the international indignation mounte The Turkish authorities have leaked details of their own investigation, suggesting that he was murdered inside the consulate and dismembered by a police team. Saudi agents who had specially moved to kill him.

The case damaged the international reputation of the kingdom and the 33-year-old Prince Mohammed, who sought to sell himself to the world as a young reformer who remembers the conservative past of his country. But suspicions that such a complicated foreign operation could not have been launched without at least its tacit approval have driven out many of its most fervent foreign supporters.

For the first time on Saturday, a Saudi official familiar with the government's handling of the situation put forward the kingdom's account of the events that led to Khashoggi's death.

The kingdom has a general order of dismissal of dissidents living abroad, said the official who requested anonymity because the investigation was continuing. When the consulate in Istanbul announced that Khashoggi would come on October 2 to retrieve a document necessary for his next marriage, General Assiri sent a team of 15 people to confront him.

Maher Abdulaziz Mutrib, a security guard, was part of the team. identified by the New York Times this week as a frequent member of the crown prince 's security service when traveling abroad, said the official. Mutrib had been chosen because he had worked with Khashoggi ten years ago at the Saudi Embbady in London and that he knew him personally.

But the order to dismiss Khashoggi in the kingdom was misinterpreted while he was following the chain of command, a Saudi official said, and a confrontation ensued when Khashoggi saw men. He tried to run away, the men stopped him, punches were thrown, Khashoggi shouted and one of the men put him in a strangling, l & # 39; 39, strangling to death, said the official.

"The interaction in the room did not last very long.

The team then handed over the body to a local collaborator, which means that the Saudis do not know where he ended up, he added.

The team was named by the Turks and the Turkish newspapers published their photographs. The New York Times established that most of them were employed by the Saudi military or security services and that at least four of them had traveled with the Crown Prince in the framework of its security activities.

The Turks had declared that the body had been disbadembled with a man. Os, seen by an autopsy specialist, went by plane specifically for this purpose and was probably taken away by the consulate in large suitcases.

Turkish investigators searched a park and forest for traces of Khashoggi remains, but did not announce their findings. 19659002] Reports of Khashoggi's killing shook members of the Saudi royal family, many of whom were unhappy with the rapid rise of Crown Prince Mohammed over the past three years. Some wondered whether the scandal could lead his king, King Salman, to replace him with another prince that the case did not tarnish.

But the king appointed Crown Prince Mohammed to lead a committee to restructure the kingdom's intelligence services. 19659002] People familiar with Saudi projects told The Times Thursday that the kingdom was considering blaming the operation of General Assiri, deputy director of intelligence. Residents said the kingdom would present the operation as an operation carried out by rogue actors who had not received the order of the summit and who had decided to interrogate and kidnap Khashoggi, but ended up killing him, maybe accidentally.

The dismissal of Qahtani, Considered a close relative of Crown Prince Mohammed, he distinguished himself by the fact that he plays no public role in matters of security or intelligence. He is responsible for media and communications for the crown prince and often leads aggressive online attacks against critics of the kingdom.

A Saudi official said that Qahtani had been fired because he was aware of the operation and had contributed to an aggressive environment. this allowed him to become violent. While he was sacked from his position as counselor to the royal court, Qahtani retained his position as head of a cybersecurity organization.

Khashoggi, 60, was one of the most well-known personalities of Saudi Arabia, a journalist who had interviewed Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan years ago. founded Al Qaeda. He later served as an advisor and unofficial spokesperson to the Saudi royal family.

But his relations with the kingdom changed with the rise of Crown Prince Mohammed, who announced major social and economic reforms, but also continued criticism.

After several of his friends and colleagues were jailed last year, Khashoggi went into exile in the Washington area and became a columnist for the Washington Post, in which he criticized the Crown Prince. Increase of authoritarianism.

When Khashoggi did not leave the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul after several hours on October 2, his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, began calling Turkish officials to tell them that he was absent.

Saudi Arabia chose to install its ad in the middle of the night for a weekend in Riyadh and Istanbul. A Turkish official said that it was too early to comment on Ankara, but that the reaction on social networks and elsewhere has been refractive.

Samantha Power, former UN ambbadador to the United Nations, Barack Obama, said on Twitter that the Saudis "are lying bald (" # Khashoggi left consulate ") to a fake condemnation (of "dishonest operation") to the fox's claim will credibly investigate what he did to the chicken. "

At the United Nations, the Secretary-General Guterres cited "the need for a prompt, thorough and transparent investigation into the circumstances of Khashoggi's death and the total responsibility of those responsible".

But Ali Shihabi, founder of the Arabia Foundation in Washington and prominent supporter of the kingdom's policy, defended the belated declaration, arguing that an initial concealment that hid the truth to the royal court accounted for the delay .

"Part of the reason for the dismissal of so much intelligent The defense officials were due to concealment and slowness in communicating all the details of what had happened to the leaders," a- he wrote on Twitter. "This tragic fiasco was a huge shock to Saudi leaders and a combination of confusion, lack of experience in crisis management and concealment by the intelligence bureaucracy contributed to the initial response of the government. Saudi Arabia. "

Jon B. Alterman director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Saudis will have to provide more information, which might or might not match information collected by Turkey and the United States in the last two weeks.

"This must be the beginning of a long-awaited multi-day effort," said Alterman.

The Saudi statement, for example, did not explain why Khashoggi was engaging in an altercation with several enemies on a territory he knew. to be dangerous. Khashoggi was considered discreet and tempered by those who knew him. He was sufficiently worried about his safety when he entered the consulate that he had told his fiancee to wait outside with instructions to call the Turkish authorities if he did not go out. far from being clear. The Saudi story seemed to avoid the question of whether the men had acted under the leadership of senior officials, as well as the question of where Khashoggi's body was.

The Trump administration spent weeks trying to salvage Saudi Arabia's role in its strategy of isolating Iran, which will be punctuated by the re-imposition, on November 5, of heavy penalties lifted under the Iranian nuclear deal of 2015.

The Turkish government said it had records suggesting that the Saudis had ambushed the consulate and had it dismembered. But Turkey, in the midst of a difficult economic period that could benefit from Saudi investments, could never reveal these recordings.

Elliott Abrams, former top diplomat of Republican administrations, said that Saudi recognition was an important first step, but that

"Where is Jamal Khashoggi's body, for example?" Asked Abrams. "And it's hard to believe that these people acted without instructions."

Abrams also dismissed the essence of the Saudi explanation that Khashoggi had decided to fight.

"He's at the consulate surrounded by a crowd of men and he's starting a fight?", Asked Abrams. "It's just not believable."