The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Skepticism deepens after Saudis’ explanation for journalist’s death
Saudi Arabia’s explanation of why its agents had strangled the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul was met with a flood of international skepticism on Saturday, even as President Donald Trump said this new account that he was killed after a fistfight sounded credible.
A Saudi official offered the kingdom’s first explanation for the involvement of a doctor of forensic medicine specializing in autopsies — a critical detail adding to international doubts about the kingdom’s story. The doctor was dispatched to help clean up fingerprints or other evidence if necessary, the official said, not to help dismember Khashoggi’s body in order to dispose of it after a premeditated assassination, as Turkish officials have charged.
The Saudis appeared to have bet heavily that they can persuade the world that Khashoggi, a bespectacled 60-year-old writer, was strangled only after he had engaged in a fistfight with a team of Saudi agents at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
In their latest version of events, they insisted that the agents had flown to Istanbul to carry out a mission without any specific authorization or even the knowledge of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 33, the kingdom’s de facto ruler.
The credibility of the new account could determine the continued willingness of Western powers to work closely with Crown Prince Mohammed, who has seized power in the kingdom more tightly than any ruler in at least half a century. The Trump administration has embraced him as the central pillar of its Middle East strategy — from containing Iranian influence to reaching a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
The new Saudi explanation of Khashoggi’s disappearance emerged only after more than two weeks of officials’ insisting that Khashoggi had left the consulate.
But King Salman on Saturday only reinforced his support for the crown prince, his favorite son, putting him in change of an overhaul of Saudi intelligence services in response to the scandal.
Trump said he was willing to accept the new Saudi account even as lawmakers in both U.S. political parties expressed grave doubts. They noted that the Saudi narrative was inconsistent with the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies and that the Saudis — including the crown prince — had depleted their credibility by maintaining for weeks that Khashoggi had left the consulate.
On Saturday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey signaled that he would reject the Saudi explanation.
“We will not allow things to remain covered,” Omer Celik, spokesman for Erdogan’s governing Justice and Development Party, said in a report by the semiofficial Anadolu news agency. “We will use all the opportunities that we have to reveal what happened, and this is the intention of our president.”
Turkish officials have said they have audio recordings and other evidence that could discredit the new Saudi account by showing that the team intended from the start to assassinate and dismember Khashoggi.
A key part of that evidence, the Turks say, is the presence of the doctor specializing in autopsies, Salah al-Tubaigy, who they say moved quickly and matter-of-factly to cut up the body. He even suggested to the agents working with him that they listen to music as he did while they carried out the gruesome work, according to Turkey’s account.
Amid the skepticism, the Saudi government has sought to convey the impression of business as usual.
The Foreign Ministry tweeted a large photo of Crown Prince Mohammed as the head of a high-level committee formed by the king to restructure the Saudi intelligence agency in the aftermath of Khashoggi’s killing. The kingdom’s allies around the region — including Egypt and most Persian Gulf monarchs — expressed strong support for Saudi Arabia’s self-investigation.
Saudi officials, meanwhile, sought to distance the crown prince from any responsibility for the killing even as they singled out one of his closest advisers as the culprit, Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, deputy chief of intelligence.
The Saudi official said Saturday that the kingdom’s intelligence agency had issued only a general order to retrieve dissidents in exile like Khashoggi, but had not specified the means to do so.