The Jamal Khashoggi story is getting very interesting. Jamal Khashoggi is a left wing Saudi reporter working for the wall st Journal and Washington post but several sources have him down as a Saudi intelligence agent with current Muslim Brotherhood connections and past connections with Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Khashoggi is the nephew of late, high-profile Saudi Arabian arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.
He also has close association with people in Turkey that are AKP the ruling proto-dictatorship there. These people are also suspected of supplying ISIS with arms. Jamal Khashoggi is a vocal opponent of the new government in Saudi Arabia put in place there in a Palace coup that was completed followed a helicopter crash that took out the military strong man in the royal family's islamist wing, Prince Mansour Bin Muqrin. The non islamist wing took full control detaining the rest. Prince Mohammad bin Salman became crown prince in June but had no power until becoming First Deputy Prime Minister late last year. That is the position that really controls the country not the throne. The King has Alzheimers disease.
Khashoggi has been critical of both Prince Salman's reforms and the arrests of both islamist supporters and people that were close to Hillary Clinton and Obama. Tese people that were arrested are an overlapping group; hence the claims that Hillary was funding ISIS. These people, all close friends of Khashoggi, were reportedly paying both ISIS and the Clinton foundation. And they were not using their own money but money designated for infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. (or all least that was the cover for the state funds allocation.) There are reports that Trump and Pompeo, then at the CIA, helped with the palace coup in early November.
Jamal Khashoggi had fled to Turkey. With Trump in the US and Prince Salman in Saudi Arabia neither country was safe. Khashoggi had in the process divorced a wife in Saudi Arabia. He was marring his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, a Turkish citizen to get Turkish citizenship. He had to get divorce papers so went into Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018. He never came out or so it seems.
From the media reports, mostly Turkish and clearly with AKP and Turkish police as the primary sources we know at the very least he was detained. He had left his I phone with his fiance and turned audio on his Apple watch making it into a 'bug'. In the Consul General's office he was probably read an arrest warrant. He was heard screaming and then according to the Turkish police he was drugged. The rest is speculation that the Turkish police have derived from sounds heard. [Apple watch experts are disputing the claim that the watch would have worked as a bug over any distance. If true then the building itself was bugged and the Saudis now know it. ]
I think that this is where the story gets interesting. Up until this point this is a rather standard arrest of a criminal or dissident that has gone to an embassy. It's actually not that rare. If the country is a neutral or an ally the result is a car ride to the airport, all visa's having been negated by the arrest warrant. The arrest is on Saudi jurisdiction so is legal. However Turkey is not an ally of the new Saudi government. Its an ally of Khashoggi and the overthrown Saudi government. So they have to smuggle him out. I'm only speculating here but I think the Saudis knew this and arranged to get him out alive and succeeded.
Anticipating challenges the Saudis look like they used an old espionage trick of sending two teams. One covert and one overt team. The 15 man conspicuous team tied up the Turkish intelligence people while the other team put him in the back seat of a car and drove off quietly. He is probably in a Saudi jail. Very unhappy but quite alive.
The Turks however have concluded that he was murdered. They think that the Saudis drugged him, cut him up and disposed of the parts. This may be projection; how the Turks would have done it. Don't go to a Turkish embassy. Kurd's already know that.
I think the Saudis have begun playing along. Thinking they killed and cut up the body puts the fear of god [not Allah] into the new Saudi governments enemies. It also creates the perfect way to take down all the media entities in Turkey, the middle east and the west that have run with this. If this reaches the UN, and it looks like it might, it creates the perfect way to destroy the reputations of the new governments opponents globally.
All they need to do is produce Jamal Khashoggi alive and well, and on legitimate charges. Why not produce him now? The answer is that the Turks are sending in a forensics team this week. If they find evidence of a murder that is later proven to have not occurred the Turkush police, the AKP and the Recep Tayyip Erdo?an government may fall and that is something both Prince Sulman, Trump and NATO would be happy with. At the very least leaving it another week ropes in all of the global left media.
Trump, Foxnews, PJmedia and breitbart are all being cautious.
Sources https://pjmedia.com/spengler/german-press-reveals-saudi-spook-saga-behind-khashoggi-disappearance/
If I'm wrong I'm wrong. If khashoggi shows up alive then enjoy the greatest psychological operation in history.
