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In the months leading up to the death of columnist Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi government recorded an alarming record of human rights violations.
He led a coalition that is waging a brutal war in neighboring Yemen, which killed thousands of civilians, including 40 children, whose school bus was bombed in August. Saudi officials have jailed dissidents, businessmen, clerics and journalists, as well as royal rivals against Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country's de facto ruler.
None of the atrocities and offenses committed by the Saudis has generated lasting indignation, at least not in the West. Through a clever public relations management, Mohammed enjoyed until recently a progressive reformist image and a convinced American ally. During a recent goodwill tour to the United States, he was warmly received by the founders of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, Jeffrey P. Bezos, Dwayne's "The Rock" Johnson, Oprah Winfrey and Rupert Murdoch.
The alleged assassination of Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul seems to have changed all that.
Why the reaction to Khashoggi, a man that few people had heard of until his death, while so many other acts of barbarity committed by the Saudis were largely neglected?
The answer could be a combination of the time and place of Khashoggi's disappearance and the abominable circumstances of his apparent death, which may have made his story more "understandable" by American viewers and readers. The accumulation of detail has created the kind of storyline that unarmed victims of war and violence rarely receive, say experts in international affairs.
The story of Khashoggi occupies an important place in the American media almost since it entered the consulate on October 2nd. Governments around the world, including the United States, called on Saudi Arabia to report on what had happened. Since then, a conference on investments in Arabia, which involved US media companies and investors, has virtually collapsed. The constant coverage of the press may have created the most important foreign policy crisis of President Trump's administration.
In addition to the geopolitical implications of Khashoggi's apparent assassination, the volume of his reports is a confirmation of a saying attributed to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin: "One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. "
Although little known until this month, Khashoggi was well connected to Washington. A former Saudi insider himself, he lived in exile in northern Virginia and was a familiar figure among Washington's foreign policy fools, politicians and media representatives. He has also worked since last year as a columnist for The Post, an association that gave him a pole and an international stamp.
All of this made it distinct and distinct from the many victims in Saudi Arabia, said Stephen McInerney, executive director of Washington-based Washington-based Project on Middle East Democracy.
"Brutal violence happens quite frequently in Saudi Arabia, but the victims tend to be anonymous," McInerney said. "Jamal was not anonymous. He was a writer and journalist for the Washington Post. This personalizes it. This humanizes him as a victim in a way [others] are not humanized in their own country. "
It is also important that Khashoggi was apparently killed outside the kingdom, he said. The assassination of a dissident in Saudi Arabia would most likely have been concealed.
In the present case, the events in question occurred in Turkey, a country which has adversarial relations with Saudi Arabia and which is therefore an incentive to expose what happened, did it? he declares.
In fact, the Turkish government was the main source of leaks on the incident, providing vital information such as the identity of some men in the so-called Saudi "strike group" and closed-circuit footage of Khashoggi entering the consulate. Each new revelation – published at strategic moments in the past two weeks – has propelled history. (The irony is that Turkey is at the forefront of jailers of journalists worldwide, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.)
In addition, Turkish officials have been behind media reports of how Khashoggi was allegedly tortured, beheaded and dismembered inside the building. These stories inextricably linked Khashoggi's name to a frightening sentence: "Bone saw".
"What has been reported is so cheeky and so macabre that it sounds like a horror film," said Sarah Margon, director of Human Rights Watch in Washington.
The allegations made the Khashoggi case "one of the craziest and most depraved journalist murders I can remember," said Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. "The brutality inflicted is the kind of thing you see on the part of a terrorist group, not a state actor."
Simon said that an important part of the public reception of Khashoggi's story was his association with The Post. Although most people can not name an individual who died as a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, many still remember the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl a few months later because of his Wall Street Journal affiliation. Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed during his reportage in Pakistan in 2002.
But even more banal details about Khashoggi helped make his story distinct and memorable, said Margon of Human Rights Watch. She notes, for example, that he went to the consulate of Saudi Arabia to obtain the necessary documents to marry his fiancée.
"There are so many conflicts and brutalities around the world that it's easy to say," War is war. Terrible things happen, "said Margon. "When an individual is killed that way, it stays with you. You can understand it. "
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