An unclassified United States intelligence report concluded Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved of, and likely ordered, the killing, of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post who wrote critically of the crown prince and his policies, was murdered by a team of Saudi agents in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. His dismembered body has never been recovered.
The Saudi crown prince has denied involvement and Riyadh has blamed the event on rogue operatives. Previous investigations, notably by Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, have concluded the order likely came from highest levels of the Saudi government.
The report concurs with those findings saying that: “Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization.”
June 2017
Jamal Khashoggi leaves Saudi Arabia for Washington, DC, where he hopes to continue writing amid a crackdown on dissent in his native Saudi Arabia.
“As we speak today, there [are] Saudi intellectuals and journalists. Now, nobody will dare to speak and criticise the reforms [initiated by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)],” he told Al Jazeera’s UpFront three months earlier.
“Let’s talk about something other than women driving. The NEOM project, the futuristic city that he (the crown prince) plans to invest half a trillion dollars in. What if it goes wrong? It could bankrupt the country.”
May 2018
The journalist meets Hatice Cengiz, a 36-year-old Turkish PhD student to whom he is soon engaged.
September 28, 2018
Khashoggi pays a first visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain a document attesting he had divorced his ex-wife, a requirement under Turkish law, so that he would be able to marry Cengiz.
October 2, 2018
Accompanied by Cengiz – who waited outside the consulate – Khashoggi is recorded by surveillance cameras entering the building at 13:14pm (10:14 GMT).