Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi journalist and WaPo columnist, has ‘been disappeared’. No one, except for the Saudis, knows where he is. It’s a mystery. Then again, maybe not so much. At about 1:15 PM local time on October 2, he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain divorce papers so he could remarry, and was never to be seen again. The event chart is below (bigger). His distraught fiancé waited outside the consulate until midnight hoping for his return before notifying Turkish authorities that he had disappeared. Turkish authorities claim Khashoggi had been murdered, claiming further they have a video of his murder. Apparently, he had on an Apple watch, which was linked to his phone in the hands of his fiancé outside, and the murder was recorded on the phone. Dick Tracy would be proud, if so. A few grains of salt might be in order for the latter. More likely was that the consulate was bugged. Either his dismembered body was spirited away in diplomatic baggage, buried in consular grounds elsewhere, or the still-alive Khashoggi was loaded into a mysterious black van and flown out to Saudi Arabia, to await, well, we can only guess. The details emerging from Turkish authorities are too gruesome to mention. The whole incident reads like a scene from The Sopranos. The Turks are outraged and have vowed a thorough investigation, but have fallen short of accusing the Saudis. Continue reading “The Khashoggi incident (viewer discretion advised)”
