Our view: Money talks louder than murder
Anyone interested in what it looks like to get away with murder should peruse the attendee list for Saudi Arabia’s “Davos in the Desert” this month.
Vaporizing into the heat is all the righteous alarm that compelled leading financial firms to boycott the event last year out of concern that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, weeks before, had ordered the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Evidence has only further accumulated of Salman’s role in the dismemberment of his critic. But it doesn't seem to matter anymore.
Attending this year’s extravaganza are executives of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, all of them institutions selected to underwrite the kingdom’s highly anticipated public offering of its oil company, Aramco, valued at up to $2 trillion. Money talks louder than murder. Laurence Fink, CEO of the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, will attend. He said this: “Corporate leaders should be having a public dialogue about (the monarchy). Not because everything in Saudi Arabia is perfect — but ... because everything is not.” That’s a very convenient rationale. The truth is that Saudi Arabia under Salman’s leadership has elected to operate very nearly like a pariah state, and there should be consequences.
Brash and ambitious at 34, Salman passes himself off as a reformer, but his regime has waged a cruel, destructive war in Yemen, tortured dissenters and kidnapped a Lebanese prime minister. Salman allowed thugs to lure Khashoggi — an American resident — into a Saudi Consulate in Turkey to be killed.
It hasn’t helped that the Trump administration has all but looked the other way, despite a CIA assessment that the crown prince likely ordered the assassination. A recent United Nations report found that it is “inconceivable that an operation of this scale could be
implemented without the crown prince being aware.”
The Saudis have made a show of placing 11 men on trial for the killing, but the secret proceedings have dragged on for months. Among the defendants are Salman’s personal bodyguard and the alleged ringleader, Maher Mutreb, and the doctor who cut up Khashoggi’s body, Salah Tubaigy. A surreptitious recording of the moments before the killing caught the men discussing dissection with a bone saw. “Joints will be separated. It is no problem,” Tubaigy assures.
Still uncharged is Saud al-Qahtani, Salman’s top aide, said by the CIA to have supervised the operation.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump operates as if the murder never happened. He lavished praise on Salman at a June summit in Japan. His son-in-law, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, is slated to attend the Future Investment Initiative on Oct. 29-31.
Salman has, in recent reports, made a point of taking “responsibility” for Khashoggi’s death because it happened under his watch, while still denying involvement.
That’s not good enough. The stain on this future king for such an evil crime must never be allowed to fade.