don t get in a fight with an individual going in to process some paperwork and then suddenly have his body disappear over an argument. there are a lot of questions. but that s only part of it. the second part of it has to deal with a lot of the secondary announcements that came out of the royal court this evening. and that includes a lot of dismissals of senior members of the saudi intelligence services in addition to a senior adviser of the royal court. when you put all of that in its totality, you can understand why people are saying this amounts to a coverup. how is it possible that the deputy general of the saudi intelligence agency carried out an operation, a possible operation of rendition, acknowledged by the saudi foreign ministry statement without a command or an order from somebody in the royal court?
some paperwork and then suddenly have his body disappear over an argument. there are a lot of questions. but that s only part of it. the second part of it has to deal with a lot of the secondary announcements that came out of the royal court this evening. and that includes a lot of dismissals of senior members of the saudi intelligence services in addition to a senior adviser of the royal court. when you put all of that in its totality, you can understand why people are saying this amounts to a coverup. how is it possible that the deputy general of the saudi intelligence agency carried out an operation, a possible operation of rendition, acknowledged by the saudi foreign ministry statement without a command or an order from somebody in the royal court? i think people who watch saudi arabia very closely will be quick to say an order like that does not happen without the most senior levels of the royal family aware of it, in specific with the crown prince himself. why that is significant
government very early on, the crown prince himself, said that they believed jamal khashoggi walked out of that consulate alive. they did not have any reason from their perspective to feel or fear he had been killed. obviously, that was certainly something a lot of the international community did not believe. we started getting reports from the u.s. that the intelligence community in the u.s. is drawing their own conclusions that he was not alive. we also heard that from president trump over the course of the past several days. the growing conclusion was he was not alive and there was mounting pressure as to whether or not the saudi pressure, all the way from the king to the crown prince, was going to thoroughly investigate this. here is the interesting part. the news from this evening as well, and there are a lot of questions as to how the politics of the saudi royal family may play out with the crown prince himself be pushed aside, would somebody else take that position? what wewood s
disappearance of mr. khashoggi. now, jim and poppy, we know also that behind the scenes, they are struggling to come up with a narrative that would accept some of the existing facts as they are now known, but distance the crown prince and the king, the royal court, from any decisionmaking process or knowledge of what might have happened in that consulate. we understand that is a process that is ongoing. it s the process that they re calling the investigation. and also, bear in mind that 15 people who went to turkey are now all back here. some of them fairly well known and prominent. one of whom is a prominent forensic pathologist. his whereabouts, we have reached out, got his phone numbers and so on. they have all gone to ground, and indeed, most people in the country would not be willing to speculate one way or another about this story at all. very few were even prepared to
mbs. in the last 18 months, especially concentrated power that has never been seen in saudi arabia before. eviscerating the royal court and taking executive control. christine. fascinating. sam kiley in riyadh. thank you. jamal khashoggi s final column published by the washington post. it was submitted by his assistant one day after he went missing. it called out the egyptian government seizure of the government. these actions no longer carry the consequences of the backlash from the international community. instead, they may trigger condemnation followed by silence. as a result, arab governments have continued free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate.