ANOTHER 'WHACK' JOB?
Saudi eyed in journo slay suspiciously dies
One of the Saudi men implicated in the likely murder of Jamal Khashoggi was killed in a “suspicious traffic accident” — a development seemingly ripped from the mob drama “Goodfellas.”
Mashal Saad al-Bostani, 31, a lieutenant in the Saudi Royal Air Forces, was among the 15-member “hit team” that flew on two private jets from Riyadh to Istanbul on Oct. 2 and headed straight to the Saudi Consulate, where Khashoggi was last seen alive.
The lieutenant died in a “suspicious traffic accident” in Riyadh, the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak reported Thursday. Few other details have emerged. The paper added that al-Bostani’s role in Khashoggi’s apparent death was not clear.
The Saudi consul, Mohammad al-Otaibi, who was picked up on an audio recording when Khashoggi was allegedly tortured, killed and dismembered, could be the “next execution” because Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “would do anything to get rid of the evidence,” the Turkish Hürriyet Daily News said Thursday.
The consul returned to Saudi Arabia Tuesday before Turkish police searched his residence.
Al-Bostani’s death comes as President Trump acknowledged for the first time that Khashoggi, who wrote for The Washington Post and was a critic of the Saudi regime, is probably dead.
“It certainly looks that way to me. It’s very sad,” the president told reporters Thursday as he left the White House for a campaign rally in Montana.
Trump was asked what consequences Saudi Arabia would face if an investigation determined the kingdom was behind Khashoggi’s death.
“It will have to be very severe,” he said. “It’s bad, bad stuff. We’ll see what happens.”
The latest developments in the Khashoggi mystery are unfurling like the plot of Martin Scorsese’s 1990 gangster classic, “Goodfellas.”
Following the multimilliondollar Lufthansa heist at Kennedy Airport, the crew of Robert De Niro’s character, Jimmy the Gent, begin turning up dead as he tries to scrub links between him and the robbery.
Saudi Arabia was considering throwing a top intelligence official who is close to the crown prince under the bus for Khashoggi’s killing, The New York Times reported.
The Saudis may say that Gen. Ahmedal-Assiri got the OKfrom Prince Mohammed to grab Khashoggi and interrogate him but that Assiri either misunderstood his orders or overreacted and killed the journalist.
Meanwhile, the Saudis are continuing to stick to their official line that Khashoggi left the consulate unharmed.
On Thursday, crime-scene investigators concluded a second search of the consulate and the consul’s residence.
Surveillance footage shows consulate vehicles with diplo- matic plates arriving at the consul’s home about two hours after Khashoggi entered the consulate. Turkish authorities said they will now search at least two rural areas outside Istanbul, according to local reports.
Khashoggi was living in the United States for the past year, after fleeing Saudi Arabia amid fears that he would be arrested as the crown prince cracked down on government critics.