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BEIRUT (AP) – Two days after the death of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the Washington Post published a column featuring his byline and the title "A Missing Voice". The space below was empty.
This influential voice in Saudi affairs has been silenced forever after three decades of writing, writing, commenting and advising the media.
Eighteen days after Khashoggi 's death, Saudi Arabia on Saturday morning acknowledged that its 59 – year – old author had died in a "fist fight" inside the consulate of Khashoggi. Saudi Arabia in Istanbul.
The announcement made by Saudi Arabia has little clarified the mystery of the disappearance of Khashoggi and contradicts the information provided by the Turkish media that he was tortured, killed and dismembered.
After being close to the royal family and advising the country's former intelligence chief, Khashoggi became a bitter critic of his young and ambitious crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, for suppressing all opposition and imitating the country in a conflict in nearby Yemen that killed thousands of people.
His death and death triggered a diplomatic storm and disrupted Saudi Arabia's alliances with its partners. They called for sanctions against the oil-rich kingdom, as well as for horrific defenders of freedom of expression and for people around the world who have never read his work.
In a final column for the Post, published on October 17 by the same newspaper on October 17, the newspaper told his assistant that Khashoggi had warned that "Middle Eastern governments now have every opportunity to continue to silence media". rate."
He noted that some leaders in the Middle East were blocking Internet access so that they could closely control what their citizens could see.
"The Arab world is confronted with its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by outside actors but by national forces vying for power," wrote Khashoggi.
Born into a family of fortune and relationships, he was the nephew of Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and a cousin of Princess Diana's boyfriend, Dodi Fayed. Khashoggi was a voice of moderation in a kingdom warring against terrorism following 9/11. , 2001, attacks in the United States.
He has spent years explaining his policy to strangers, but is unpopular at home, claiming that the intervention by the Saudi government in Yemen would "validate" those who compare the kingdom's actions to what Russia and Iran are doing in Syria. He also criticized the diplomatic break between Riyadh and Qatar.
After Khashoggi had criticized Donald Trump's election celebration for the presidency by the kingdom in 2016, a royal court official who was close to him had advised him to stop publishing articles on Twitter and to publish it. , a sign that his opinion was no longer welcome.
Khashoggi exiled himself at his pleasure and settled in Washington in 2017, regularly writing columns for the post office and pursuing projects in favor of democracy.
The repression exerted by the Crown Prince has intensified after Khashoggi's departure, reaching some of his friends and associates. A former chief, Saudi billionaire Alwaleed bin Talal, was among dozens of businessmen and members of the royal family placed under house arrest in an upscale hotel in November 2017, as part of a A campaign of repression against corruption that soon resembled a disaster of the most powerful people of the kingdom.
"The Saudi royals see themselves as the Party, sharing power and governing by consent, in a largely opaque arrangement," wrote Khashoggi after the crackdown, adding that the Crown Prince "overthrows this arrangement and centralizes all powers within his position".
But in May, he told the economist that he did not agree with the Saudis who "demanded a change of regime, etc." I believe in the system. I just want a reform system. In fact, I want the system to give me a voice to allow me to speak. "
While supporting the fight against corruption, he described what was happening in Saudi Arabia as "selective justice". He said the corruption was so entrenched that royal family members monopolized land ownership and that less than 40 percent of the Saudis could own their homes.
"The Crown Prince is engaged in a major economic transformation, and since there is no one to debate, he will not see the errors of this transformation," he told The Economist.
Azzam Tamimi, an Anglo-Palestinian friend, said that Khashoggi had spoken to Westerners in a language they understand.
Prince Mohammed "has spent millions in public relations and wanted to present himself as a modernist savior who brings rights to women," said Tamimi. "Jamal used to show on the other side what Mohammed bin Salam did not want to show."
Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi was born in Medina in 1958 and graduated from Indiana State University. He began his career as a journalist in the 1980s, covering the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the decade of war that followed for the English-language daily Saudi Gazette. He covered the 1990s war in Algeria against Islamic militants, the wars in the Balkans and the rise of Islamists in Sudan.
In his youth, according to a friend, Khashoggi briefly joined the Muslim Brotherhood, the most powerful organization of political Islam in the region. He soon left, eager to stay out of organized groups, but kept his whole life of good relations with all parties.
He has been the editor of the Islamist-biased newspaper in Medina for nine years.
In Afghanistan, he interviewed Osama Bin Laden before becoming the leader of al-Qaeda. They then returned to Sudan in 1995.
"He could have done a lot better for himself, his family and his religion if he remained moderate," said Khashoggi following the assassination of bin Laden by an American raid in Pakistan in 2011.
Khashoggi wrote in a column of the Daily Star in Lebanon on September 10, 2002: "The hijacked planes of Osama bin Laden not only attacked the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but also attacked Islam as the values of tolerance and coexistence preached by Islam ".
He worked briefly in 2003 as editor of a Saudi liberal newspaper, Al-Watan, founded after Sept. 11, and he was often quoted in the West as a reformist voice and an expert on Islamist radicals. But two months later, he was fired when the ultra-conservative monks of the kingdom rejected his criticism of the powerful religious police.
Khashoggi served as media advisor to Turki Al-Faisal, the country's former spy chief, who was then ambassador to Britain and then to the United States.
He returned to Al-Watan in 2007, where he continued to criticize the religious when the late King Abdullah began cautious reforms to try to shake them up. Three years later, he is forced to resign after a series of articles criticizing Salafism, the ultra-conservative Sunni movement.
In 2010, he was asked to lead the new broadcaster based in Bahrain, Al-Arab, presented as a rival of the group Al-Jazeera, funded by Qatar, a stern critic of the kingdom. But it was closed several hours after its launch for hosting a personality of the Bahraini opposition.
After the uprisings of the 2011 Arab Spring, he criticized the crackdown by various Arab governments against the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that Saudi Arabia sees as an existential threat.
His friends recalled him as a devout Muslim who loved his homeland, a history enthusiast and a humble man with a sense of humor, a video game lover, whom he sometimes played while waiting for conduct an interview.
A first marriage that gave birth to two sons and two girls collapsed and Khashoggi told his friends that he had failed due to pressure from the Saudi government on his critics.
Her visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 was to provide Hatice Cengiz with the necessary documents for her planned wedding the next day. He waited in vain for him to come out of the complex.
Khashoggi said that he was not planning to return to Saudi Arabia because he "did not want to risk losing my freedom." I really do not like being in jail. to be a free writer, I think that I am serving my people, my country. "
Sherif Mansour, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said that Khashoggi was one of the few Saudis to help track down missing and detained journalists and activists.
"Saudi Arabia has always been a black hole in terms of information, and now, after Jamal's case, it's even harder to get any," Mansour said. "These journalists depended on Khashoggi to tell their stories, and now it is up to us to tell his story and to make sure that the risks he has taken on behalf of these journalists are not in vain."
