It has been nearly two months to the day since Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul hoping to retrieve papers needed to marry his Turkish fiance - only to be killed and butchered by a 15-man Saudi murder squad. In the intervening weeks, the Saudis have suffered remarkably little blowback: To date, the US and Canada have levied sanctions against a 17 Saudis suspected of participating or orchestrating Khashoggi's murder, and a handful of countries who don't sell arms to Saudi Arabia have said they will stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia.
Clearly concerned about the flagging interest in holding Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman accountable for his suspected role in ordering the killing, the CIA has decided to pick up where Turkey left off.
On Saturday morning, the Wall Street Journal published the latest intelligence agency leak when it reported on the contents of intercepts revealing that during the hours after and immediately before the killing, MbS had exchanged 11 messages with Saud al-Qahtani, a close aide to the prince who is believed to have supervised the murder squad. Notably, the WSJ report followed a vote in the Senate earlier this week to open debate on a measure to withdraw US support for Saudi Arabia's proxy war in Yemen.
The Saudi leader also in August 2017 had told associates that if his efforts to persuade Mr. Khashoggi to return to Saudi Arabia weren't successful, "We could possibly lure him outside Saudi Arabia and make arrangements," according to the assessment, a communication that it states "Seems to foreshadow the Saudi operation launched against Khashoggi."
The previously unreported excerpts reviewed by the Journal state that the CIA has "Medium-to-high confidence" that Prince Mohammed "Personally targeted" Khashoggi and "Probably ordered his death." It added: "To be clear, we lack direct reporting of the Crown Prince issuing a kill order."
The judgment on Prince Mohammed's likely culpability, the CIA assessment says, is based on the crown prince's personal focus on Mr. Khashoggi, his tight control over the Saudi operatives sent to Istanbul to kill him, "And his authorizing some of the same operators to violently target other opponents."
The highly classified CIA assessment says that the Saudi team sent to kill Mr. Khashoggi was assembled from Prince Mohammed's top security units in the Royal Guard and in an organization run by Mr. Qahtani, the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Royal Court, the Saudi royal court's media department.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-01/saudi-crown-prince-communicated-khashoggi-murder-squad-hours-killing
Clearly concerned about the flagging interest in holding Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman accountable for his suspected role in ordering the killing, the CIA has decided to pick up where Turkey left off.
On Saturday morning, the Wall Street Journal published the latest intelligence agency leak when it reported on the contents of intercepts revealing that during the hours after and immediately before the killing, MbS had exchanged 11 messages with Saud al-Qahtani, a close aide to the prince who is believed to have supervised the murder squad. Notably, the WSJ report followed a vote in the Senate earlier this week to open debate on a measure to withdraw US support for Saudi Arabia's proxy war in Yemen.
The Saudi leader also in August 2017 had told associates that if his efforts to persuade Mr. Khashoggi to return to Saudi Arabia weren't successful, "We could possibly lure him outside Saudi Arabia and make arrangements," according to the assessment, a communication that it states "Seems to foreshadow the Saudi operation launched against Khashoggi."
The previously unreported excerpts reviewed by the Journal state that the CIA has "Medium-to-high confidence" that Prince Mohammed "Personally targeted" Khashoggi and "Probably ordered his death." It added: "To be clear, we lack direct reporting of the Crown Prince issuing a kill order."
The judgment on Prince Mohammed's likely culpability, the CIA assessment says, is based on the crown prince's personal focus on Mr. Khashoggi, his tight control over the Saudi operatives sent to Istanbul to kill him, "And his authorizing some of the same operators to violently target other opponents."
The highly classified CIA assessment says that the Saudi team sent to kill Mr. Khashoggi was assembled from Prince Mohammed's top security units in the Royal Guard and in an organization run by Mr. Qahtani, the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Royal Court, the Saudi royal court's media department.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-01/saudi-crown-prince-communicated-khashoggi-murder-squad-hours-killing
No comments:
Post a Comment