SAKRAN, Turkey — A Turkish court on Friday ordered the release of American pastor Andrew Brunson from house arrest, ending his 24-month imprisonment and allowing him to fly home. The decision signaled a truce of sorts in a heated diplomatic dispute between Turkey and the United States.
Brunson was sentenced to three years, one month, and 15 days in prison, but the judge lifted all judicial controls — including a ban on travel — leaving him free to leave the country immediately, because of a reduction for good behavior and time already served.
Brunson left the courthouse by car shortly after the decision was announced. Hours later, he was transported to Izmir’s airport and was flown out of Turkey, where he had lived for two decades. He was expected to be flown to the US military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.
The Trump administration had pressed hard for the release of Brunson, an evangelical pastor who runs the small Resurrection Church in Izmir. He was one of two dozen Americans detained in the aftermath of a failed coup in 2016 and was charged with aiding terrorist groups and espionage, charges he denies.
That should give you an idea about his status and non-official cover, and what is down the memory hole is another Obama intervention like in Ukraine.
Brunson’s prolonged detention and trial significantly raised tensions between the United States and Turkey, with President Trump and Vice President Pence personally raising his case several times with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. The United States imposed financial sanctions and members of Congress traveled to Turkey to attend his trial.
“Thanks be to God,” said the Rev. William Devlin of New York, who has attended every hearing.
Or, you know, Trump.
Washington and Turkey have been involved in complex negotiations over the fate of Brunson for months. US officials had also pushed, unsuccessfully, for Brunson’s release to include the freeing of Serkan Golge, a Turkish-American scientist, and three Turkish citizens who had worked at US diplomatic missions.
Turkey still holding some Trump cards in their hand, 'eh?
Turkey is grappling with a growing economic crisis and has been anxious to reduce a fine of billions of dollars that the US Treasury is expected to impose on the state-owned Turkish bank, Halkbank, for its part in a conspiracy to violate US sanctions against Iran.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, maintaining relations with Iran will bring on an economic crisis.
Maybe they can cut a deal or two.
Brunson’s release coincided with the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and journalist who was a columnist for The Washington Post, inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
Yeah, and that has been a big deal all week now.
Oddly enough, the Washington ComPost is also known as the CIA's newspaper.
Is that why there is such a fuss being made over the case?
Turkish officials say they have video and audio evidence that Khashoggi, a US resident, was killed, and his case may have led Turkey to seek to repair relations with Washington to secure its help in confronting Saudi Arabia, analysts said.
Well, we will see about that.
Washington has accused Ankara of holding Brunson, along with roughly 20 Turkish-Americans and three Turkish employees of the US consular mission in Turkey, for use as leverage in its various disputes with the United States.
In particular, Turkey has requested the extradition from the United States of Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen, whom it accuses of running a terrorist organization and of instigating the 2016 coup attempt. Erdogan once suggested a swap of the cleric and the pastor.
Erdogan has also sought to reduce penalties against Halkbank. A bank official, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, was sentenced to 32 months imprisonment in May in a Manhattan court for his part in the scheme.
The two countries came close to agreeing in July to a coordinated release of Brunson and Atilla, but Erdogan held out for a guarantee that further prosecutions against Turkey for sanctions violations would end.
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So they barred his release and then let him out of jail?
I'm in awe of the raw power the U.S. can exert.
"President Trump welcomed American pastor Andrew Brunson to the Oval Office on Saturday, celebrating his release from nearly two years of confinement in Turkey, which had sparked a diplomatic row with a key ally and an outcry from US evangelical groups. Brunson appeared to be in good health and good spirits. He thanked Trump for working to secure his freedom and then led his family in prayer for the president. Administration officials cast Brunson’s release as vindication of Trump’s hard-nosed negotiating stance, saying Turkey tried to set terms for Brunson’s release, but Trump was insistent on a release without conditions (AP)."
That was the only article that related in any way to the two concerns in the article above it on Sunday.
Also see:
Saturday Globe From A to Z
Saudi Arabia Threatens Canada
Tightening the Noo$e on Turkey
I think they slipped out of it!
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Here is how they did:
"Turkey has been under a state of emergency for nearly two years, declared after a failed coup attempt in July 2016. The emergency decree is expected to be the last of a series of emergency laws as Turkey’s ruling system will fully transform into an executive presidency under the authority of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan."
It is still a big deal to them, and wouldn't it be to you?
"Turkey’s finance minister said Sunday that the government has prepared ‘‘an action plan’’ to ease market concerns that have led to a slump in the nation’s currency. In an interview with the newspaper Hurriyet, Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak also said the government had no plans to seize foreign currency deposits or convert deposits to the Turkish lira. ‘‘As of Monday morning,” he said, “our institutions will take the necessary actions and will share the necessary announcements with markets.’’ Turkey was hit by a financial shock wave this past week as the lira nosedived 14 percent Friday over concerns about the government’s economic policies and a trade and diplomatic dispute with the United States. The currency’s value has fallen more than 40 percent since the start of the year. Earlier, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned of drastic measures if businesses withdraw foreign currency from banks. On Sunday, Erdogan warned business executives to not ‘‘rush to banks to withdraw foreign currency.’’ He added that businesses should ‘‘know that keeping this nation alive and standing isn’t just our job, but also the job of industrialists, of merchants.’’ Erdogan reiterated his earlier claim that the crisis resulted from ‘‘an operation against our economy conducted through exchange rates’’ and said Turkey would prevail."
It's the old U.S. economic $queeze!
"Turkey’s currency fell to another record low Monday, hitting stocks in Europe and Asia and raising fears that the country is on the verge of an economic meltdown that could spread to other emerging markets. The crisis, caused by soaring inflation, economic mismanagement by the Turkish government, and tensions with the United States, has raised concerns over whether emerging economies that have benefited in recent years from foreign investment may also be vulnerable. Foreign investors piled money into Turkish assets for years, lured by what appeared to be a stable economy and higher returns, but as interest rates rise in countries seen as safer, the relative attractiveness of riskier investments wanes. A crisis like the one in Turkey may be all it takes to send them fleeing. Turkey’s central bank insisted over the weekend that it would “take all necessary measures” to preserve the country’s financial stability, but it has so far refused to raise interest rates and the changes it has pushed through thus far have been limited in scope. After the Turkish lira fell even further — $1 bought 3.8 liras at the start of the year, but at one point Monday it was worth 7.2 liras — investors dumped other emerging-market currencies. The Indian rupee dropped to a record low against the dollar, the Indonesian rupiah flirted with a three-year low, and the South African rand lost 2 percent after falling nearly 6 percent last week."
Also see: Now, Erdogan Faces Turkey's Troubled Economy
The NYT tells me he is on a knife's edge as they are trying to force an IMF deal on them!
"US stocks fell further Monday as Turkey’s central bank was unable to stop a steep plunge in the nation’s currency. That’s helping to push the dollar higher, hurting big exporters. Stocks are coming off their worst losses in a month as investors worry about financial and economic upheaval in Turkey and the possibility it will spread to other countries. Asian markets fell overnight, while European markets were slightly lower. Global markets skidded Friday as investors worried that financial distress in Turkey could affect the international banking system and the broader economy. Many analysts say that isn’t likely, but the fear of it has caused sharp losses for stocks. On Monday, Turkey’s central bank unveiled measures to help the country’s banks, but the Turkish lira and Turkey’s stock market continued to slide. The lira has been tumbling as investors question whether the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan can cope with problems including the weakening currency and a diplomatic spat with Washington that has resulted in higher US tariffs. Erdogan has ruled out the possibility of higher interest rates, which can slow economic growth, but independent analysts say higher rates are urgently needed to stabilize the currency. Erdogan’s refusal is one of several factors worrying investors. Investors also backed away from Argentina’s stock market. The Argentine peso sank to an all-time low amid investor caution and a corruption scandal involving former government officials. While Turkey and Argentina face very different political situations, the currencies of both countries have tumbled to all-time lows against the dollar, partly because rising interest rates in the United States lure investors to take money out of their markets and move it to the United States. The US dollar is the strongest it’s been in more than a year, which could eventually create problems for companies that make a lot of sales overseas. Investors are worried about a confluence of factors including Turkey’s reliance on foreign loans, which become more difficult to repay when the country’s currency is plunging. And the diplomatic fight with the United States is resulting in sharply higher tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum. After a yearlong stretch when much of the global economy was speeding up and stocks were rising, the recent losses for Turkey and Argentina have caused emerging market indexes to fall out of favor. Stocks were on a five-week winning streak before last week, and strong corporate earnings reports were a big factor, but stocks may spend the next two months wavering. In corporate news, most retailers were down, but Amazon advanced 0.5 percent....."
It's called capital flight, and it's how you bend countries to your will.
"The Turkish government ramped up the trade dispute. Ankara said it was sharply raising tariffs on US-made alcohol, cars, and tobacco after Trump tweeted last week that he was doubling levies on Turkish steel and aluminum. Turkey’s banking regulator has announced measures that offered some relief for banks, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for a ban on US electronics products. The Turkish lira, which at one point lost a third of its value against the dollar in a matter of days, strengthened against the US currency for a second day in a row Wednesday....."
"Turkey’s currency stabilized and rose after authorities sought to ease liquidity problems in the banking system, but Turkey imposed $500 million in tariffs on US goods as tensions between the countries increased. There is also no sign Turkey’s president will let the central bank raise interest rates, which economists say it should do urgently to support the currency. The Turkish ISE National 100 index slumped 3.4 after a gain of 0.8 percent Tuesday....."
Looks like the Turks at least got on top of it even if they don't have the upper hand.
"Turkish finance chief tries to reassure investors on crisis" by Suzan Fraser Associated Press August 16, 2018
NEW YORK — Turkey’s finance chief tried to reassure thousands of international investors on a conference call Thursday, in which he pledged to fix the economic troubles that have seen the country spiral into a currency crisis.
The national currency recovered somewhat from record lows hit earlier this week, a day after Qatar pledged $15 billion in investments to help Turkey’s economy. The lira strengthened some 4 percent against the dollar, to around 5.75 per dollar.
Just Qatar returning the favor after Saudi Arabia blockaded them.
Is it possible that is connected to the Khashoggi thing?
Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak was quoted by private media NTV as saying the economy would emerge stronger from the turmoil.
Albayrak said Turkey’s banks are ‘‘healthy and strong’’ and implementing structural reforms and maintaining tight monetary policy to fight inflation remain priorities. The minister ruled out any move to limit money flows — which is a possibility that worries investors — or any assistance from the International Monetary Fund, NTV said.
Aaaaaaah!
This is all about getting them under that yoke!
The lira had nosedived in recent weeks, hitting a record low of 7.24, as investors worried about fundamental economic problems in the country and the diplomatic and trade dispute with the United States.
Among the big concerns is that Turkey’s has amassed high levels of foreign debt to fuel growth in recent years, and as the currency drops, that debt becomes so much more expensive to repay, leading to potential bankruptcies.
You become a $lave to debt.
Also worrying investors has been President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s refusal to allow the central bank to raise interest rates to support the currency, as experts say it should. Erdogan has tightened his grip since consolidating power after general elections this year.
In his conference call, Albayrak did not appear to specify whether the central bank would be assured its independence or hint at whether rates would be allowed to rise.
Doubts about Turkey’s future intensified as relations with the United States, a longtime NATO ally, soured. After the sanctions on two Turkish government ministers and the steel and aluminum tariffs, Turkey retaliated with some $533 million of tariffs on some US imports — including cars, tobacco, and alcoholic drinks — and said it would boycott US electronic goods, singling out iPhones.
The White House said Wednesday that the United States ‘‘won’t forget’’ how Turkey treated Brunson.
Was that a threat?
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders also criticized Turkey’s move to impose tariffs on some US goods as ‘‘regrettable and a step in the wrong direction.’’
She would not comment on whether the Trump administration would respond.
The Turkish currency began to recover after authorities this week took steps to help bank liquidity. Also helping the currency were moves by Turkey this week to gain favor with European countries, including releasing two Greek soldiers and an Amnesty International human rights campaigner from prison.
Turkish officials said Erdogan spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron, during which the French president said Turkey’s economic stability is important for France. Erdogan held a similar conversation with Germany’s Angela Merkel on Wednesday.
More on them at the end of this post.
Qatar said it would provide ‘‘a host of economic projects, investments and deposits’’ worth $15 billion to support Turkey’s economy. The decision came after Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, met with Erdogan in Ankara.
Meanwhile.....
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"Two detained after shots are fired at US Embassy in Turkey" Associated Press August 21, 2018
ISTANBUL — Shots were fired from a moving car at the US Embassy in Turkey before dawn on Monday, an attack that came during heightened tensions between the two NATO allies. Officials said two people with criminal records were detained.
There were no casualties in the fleeting attack, in which three of the six bullets fired hit the embassy gate and a reinforced window in the building in Ankara.
‘‘We can confirm a security incident took place at the US Embassy early this morning. We have no reports of any injuries, and we are investigating,’’ embassy spokesman David Gainer said. He thanked Turkish police for their ‘‘rapid response.’’
Ankara governor’s office named the suspects as Ahmet Celikten, 39, and Osman Gundas, 38, saying they had confessed. They were apprehended along with a 9-millimeter gun and a vehicle with Ankara license plates.
The statement said Celikten had escaped prison and Gundas had several crimes under his belt, including car theft, drugs, threats, and injury.
I wonder what their mothers’ had to say.
Turkish officials are locked in a trade and diplomatic dispute with the United States, but they fully condemned the shooting in Ankara. Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin tweeted that the attack was ‘‘an attempt to create chaos.’’
By who?
A top official in Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party said that the attack was a clear provocation, and that foreign diplomats are guests of the country.
‘‘The utmost sensitivity will be shown to ensure their security,’’ said the party spokesman, Omer Celik. ‘‘Turkey is a safe country.’’
It smells like some sort of false flag to make Turkey look good.
Tensions between the United States and Turkey are high, partly because of the case of Andrew Brunson, an American pastor who is being prosecuted in Turkey for alleged espionage and terrorism-related offenses. He denies any wrongdoing, and President Trump has called for his immediate release.
Turkey has long criticized the United States for not agreeing to hand over Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric accused by Turkish authorities of engineering an attempted coup in 2016. Gulen denies those allegations.
--more--"
Back inside the bank:
"Turkey’s central bank said it will adjust monetary policy this month, raising hopes it will increase interest rates, as independent experts say it should do to keep the currency from falling and fueling a financial crisis. Official figures show the annual inflation rate jumped to 17.9 percent in August, from 16 percent in July. That was the highest since 2003, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power. The central bank is under pressure from Erdogan to refrain from raising interest rates, which could hinder economic growth but which is also needed to control inflation and support the currency. The Turkish lira has plunged some 40 percent against the dollar so far this year over concerns about Erdogan’s economic policies and a spat with the United States over the detention of an American pastor on espionage and terror-related charges. Washington imposed sanctions and threatened new ones unless the pastor is released."
Was put on the blacklist by tweet.
"Turkey’s central bank sharply raised interest rates Thursday, a dramatic increase aimed at curbing inflation and a decline in the country’s currency, but one that the Turkish president had long resisted. The move, increasing Turkey’s benchmark interest rate to 24 percent from 17.75 percent, quickly helped the Turkish lira strengthen against the dollar. The currency dropped to record lows earlier in the summer on investor concern that inflation was accelerating and that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was taking too active a role in the management of the economy."
Well, it's an executive presidency now.
"U.S. stocks ended back where they started Friday as the stock market wrapped up its best quarter in almost five years. Global banks fell and European stocks skidded after Italy's new government announced a big increase in spending. Italy's main stock index fell almost 4 percent as investors worried that the government's plan will lead to a clash with European Union leaders who want Italy to reduce its debt level. Through the third quarter, pain in other markets led to gains for U.S. stocks. One reason is that investors are worried about other regions, especially emerging markets. The currencies of Turkey and Argentina both dropped during the quarter and investors worried that their currency and economic problems would harm the rest of the world. "Investors do pivot to the U.S. when they have concerns about other regions," said Marina Severinovsky, an investment strategist at Schroders, but emerging markets stocks have bounced back somewhat over the last two weeks, and Severinovsky said they might do better than U.S. stocks in the fourth quarter....."
That's what we are in now.
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"Washington Post says Turkey has proof Saudi writer was killed" by Suzan Fraser Associated Press October 12, 2018
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey’s government has told US officials it has audio and video proof that missing Saudi Arabian writer and US resident Jamal Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, The Washington Post reported Friday.
Then they were bugging the embassy, weren't they?
The newspaper, for which Khashoggi is a columnist, cited anonymous officials as saying the recordings show a Saudi security team detained the writer when he went to the consulate on Oct. 2 to pick up a document for his upcoming wedding.
The Associated Press was not immediately able to confirm the report and Turkish officials would not comment.
Late Friday afternoon, President Trump said he will raise the disappearance of Khashoggi with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman.
Meanwhile, a delegation from Saudi Arabia arrived in Turkey on Friday as part of an investigation into the writer’s disappearance, a Foreign Ministry official said.
Saudi Arabia has called the allegation it abducted or harmed Khashoggi ‘‘baseless.’’ However, it has offered no evidence to support its claim he left the consulate and vanished, despite his fiancee waiting outside.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said the delegation would hold talks with Turkish officials over the weekend. It did not provide further details.
On Thursday, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Turkey and Saudi Arabia would form a ‘‘joint working group’’ to look into Khashoggi’s disappearance.
It is looking like whatever happened, these two are trying to diffuse tensions.
In a statement posted on Twitter, Saudi Arabia welcomed Turkey’s approval of the joint working group. The Saudi statement said the kingdom is keen ‘‘to sustain the security and safety of its citizenry, wherever they might happen to be.’’
Take that last statement with a grain of sand.
Meanwhile, the disappearance of Khashoggi thrown into the spotlight the large number of diplomatic vacancies under Trump — notably in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. It’s a gap the administration says it has been trying to fix but with limited success.
Where did that come from?
Nice spin move!
Khashoggi’s case and the fact that there are no American ambassadors in either Ankara or Riyadh have prompted concerns about dozens of unfilled senior State Department positions almost two years into Trump’s presidency, and, those concerns have sparked an increasingly bitter battle with Congress over who is to blame.
I doubt Khashoggi’s family and friends care much.
Aside from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Trump has yet to nominate candidates for ambassadorial posts in 20 nations, including Australia, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, Pakistan, South Africa, Singapore, and Sweden. At the same time, 46 ambassadorial nominees are still awaiting Senate confirmation, prompting angry complaints from the administration and pushback from Democratic lawmakers.
A number of ambassador positions to international organizations also remain unfilled as do 13 senior positions at the State Department headquarters, for which five have no nominee.
‘‘There are real, direct impacts of not having these people confirmed,’’ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier this month, making the case for the Senate to act quickly. Those remarks set off a war of words with Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who was singled out by Pompeo for blame.
‘‘I want every single American to know that what Sen. Menendez and members of the Senate are doing to hold back American diplomacy rests squarely on their shoulders,’’ Pompeo said. He later maintained that Senate Democrats are blocking more than a dozen nominees ‘‘because of politics’’ and are ‘‘putting our nation at risk.’’
Menendez fired back, accusing Pompeo of politicizing the process and blaming confirmation delays on the unsuitability of candidates for certain posts and the Republican leadership for not calling votes on the others. He also slammed the administration for failing to nominate candidates for critical posts.
‘‘We cannot confirm nominees who have not been nominated,’’ he noted wryly, adding that some nominees had been or are currently being blocked by Republicans.
When is your next trip to the Dominican, Bob?
Two cases in point: The nominee for the top US diplomat for Asia, a career foreign service officer, was forced to withdraw earlier this year after Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said he would do everything in his power to stop the nomination. The career diplomat nominated to be ambassador to Colombia is being blocked by Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah.
Pompeo responded by again blaming Menendez for holding up more than 60 nominees and using them as a ‘‘political football.’’ “We need our team on the field to conduct America’s foreign policy,’’ he said.
Perhaps as a result of the sparring, the Senate late Thursday did vote to confirm several ambassadorial nominees, including those to Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Suriname, and Uzbekistan.
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The lack of ambassadors made me forget about him.
"Mystery surrounding missing Saudi writer deepens" Washington Post October 03, 2018
LONDON — The mystery surrounding the whereabouts of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi deepened Wednesday with Turkish officials saying he was still inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, contradicting a Saudi government statement that he had left it a day earlier.
Khashoggi, 59, a prominent commentator who writes for The Washington Post’s Global Opinions section and has recently been critical of the Saudi leadership, visited the consulate Tuesday to obtain paperwork related to his upcoming wedding, his fiancee said. He has not been heard from since.....
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"Saudis insist missing Post contributor left Turkey consulate" by Jon Gambrell and Ayse Wieting Associated Press October 04, 2018
ISTANBUL — Saudi Arabia’s Consulate in Istanbul insisted Thursday that a missing Saudi contributor to The Washington Post left its building before disappearing, directly contradicting Turkish officials who say they believe the writer is still inside.
The comments further deepen the mystery surrounding what happened to Jamal Khashoggi, who had been living in self-imposed exile in the United States while writing columns critical of the kingdom and its policies under upstart Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Khashoggi’s disappearance also threatened to further harm relations between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which are on opposite sides of an ongoing four-nation boycott of Qatar and other regional crises. Turkey summoned the Saudi ambassador to its Foreign Ministry on Thursday over the writer’s disappearance, said an official who requested anonymity in line with government rules.
The State Department said it was aware of Khashoggi’s disappearance and was seeking more information. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke by telephone Wednesday with Prince Mohammed, but it was unclear if the writer’s case came up in their conversation.
Khashoggi is a longtime Saudi journalist, foreign correspondent, editor, and columnist whose work has been controversial in the past in the ultraconservative Sunni kingdom. He went into self-imposed exile in the United States following the ascension of Prince Mohammed, now next in line to succeed his father, the 82-year-old King Salman.
Khashoggi was known for his interviews and travels with Osama bin Laden between 1987 and 1995, including in Afghanistan, where he wrote about the battle against the Soviet occupation. In the early 1990s, he tried to persuade bin Laden to reconcile with the Saudi royal family and return home from his base in Sudan, but the Al Qaeda leader refused.
Khashoggi maintained ties with Saudi elites and launched a satellite news channel, Al-Arab, from Bahrain in 2015 with the backing of Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. The channel was on air for less than 11 hours before it was shut down. Its billionaire backer was detained in the Ritz Carlton roundup overseen by Prince Mohammed in 2017.
That was when the printed copy slammed the door shut.
So this is all part of some internal Saudi power struggle over the throne, huh?
As a contributor to the Post, Khashoggi has written extensively about Saudi Arabia, including criticizing its war in Yemen, its recent diplomatic spat with Canada, and its arrest of women’s rights activists after the lifting of a ban on women driving.
The dispute over Khashoggi’s disappearance also threatens to reopen rifts between Ankara and Riyadh. Turkey has supported Qatar amid a yearlong boycott by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates over a political dispute. Turkey’s support of political Islamists, like the Muslim Brotherhood, also angers leaders in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, which label the organization a ‘‘terrorist group’’ threatening their hereditarily ruled nations.
Press freedom groups have decried Khashoggi’s disappearance. The Vienna-based International Press Institute wrote a letter to Saudi King Salman calling on the monarch to ensure Khashoggi’s immediate release.
‘‘If, as it claims, Saudi Arabia truly wishes to transition to a more open society, it will have to accept the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and freedom of the press,’’ wrote Ravi R. Prasad, the institute’s head of advocacy.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists also expressed concern, saying ‘‘given the Saudi authorities’ pattern of quietly detaining critical journalists, Khashoggi’s failure to emerge from the Saudi consulate on the day he entered is a cause for alarm.’’
Yeah, at least Eric Holder eventually let those reporters he jailed out.
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Related:
"Turkey has concluded that Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent journalist from Saudi Arabia, was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this week by a Saudi team sent ‘‘specifically for the murder,’’ two people with knowledge of the probe said Saturday. Turkish investigators believe a 15-member team ‘‘came from Saudi Arabia. It was a preplanned murder,’’ said one of the people. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. They offered no specific evidence to back up the account (Washington Post)."
I imagine they had just finished listening to the tapes and watching the video, and that might be the only evidence there is if the Saudis did what was alleged.
"Turkey demands ‘convincing explanation’ on missing Saudi journalist" by David D. Kirkpatrick and Ben Hubbard New York Times October 08, 2018
Turkish officials on Sunday demanded a “convincing explanation” from Saudi Arabia over the alleged killing of a dissident who disappeared during a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, sharply escalating tensions between two of the Middle East’s most important powers.
The dissident, Jamal Khashoggi, is a veteran Saudi journalist and commentator who had turned critical of the kingdom under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
After fleeing the kingdom last year for voluntary exile because he feared arrest, Khashoggi vanished after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday to pick up a document that would allow him to remarry in Turkey.
On Saturday, Turkish officials speaking on the condition of anonymity told The New York Times and other news organizations that investigators had concluded Khashoggi was killed by Saudi agents inside the consulate.
“There is concrete information; it will not remain an unsolved case,” Yasin Aktay, an adviser to the head of Turkey’s ruling AKP party, said Sunday in an interview with the Turkish CNN network. “The consulate should make a clear explanation,” he added.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, did not mention Khashoggi or Saudi Arabia once during a televised address Sunday, but speaking to reporters afterward, Erdogan said he was awaiting a prosecutor’s investigation about what had happened to Khashoggi.
The crown prince and other Saudi officials have denied killing or abducting Khashoggi, saying they do not know where he is. And by midafternoon Sunday, no Turkish official had publicly accused Saudi Arabia of killing Khashoggi.
Saudi Arabia, for its part, released a statement early Sunday dismissing news reports about the accusations of unnamed Turkish officials that Saudi agents had killed Khashoggi. The consulate in Istanbul “strongly denounced these baseless allegations, and expressed doubt that they came from Turkish officials that are informed of the investigation,” the statement said.
It praised “the brotherly Turkish government” for accepting a Saudi request to send a “security delegation of Saudi investigators” to assist in the inquiry into Khashoggi’s disappearance, but in an interview with news channel TRT Haber, Aktay said: “This is an assault against Turkey’s right of sovereignty. Turkey is expecting a convincing explanation.”
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"Turkey demands Saudi Arabia’s ‘full cooperation’ in probe of missing journalist" Washington Post October 08, 2018
ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded Monday that Saudi Arabia prove that journalist Jamal Khashoggi left the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on his own, as Saudi officials have repeatedly asserted since he disappeared last week after being inside the mission.
Erdogan’s comments were his most direct suggestion yet of potential Saudi culpability in Khashoggi’s disappearance and came after other Turkish officials have said they believe he was killed by Saudi agents inside the consulate.
‘‘Do you not have cameras and everything of the sort?’’ Erdogan said of the consular officials. ‘‘They have all of them. Then why do you not prove this? You need to prove it.’’
Turkey’s foreign ministry summoned the Saudi ambassador to urge ‘‘full cooperation’’ in the investigation, the official Anadolu news agency said Monday.
The ambassador was called to the ministry in the Turkish capital, Ankara, on Sunday, the agency said. It was the second time Turkey summoned the ambassador since Khashoggi failed to emerge following a visit to the consulate on Oct. 2.
Turkish officials have said they believe Khashoggi, 59, a critic of the Saudi leadership and a contributor to The Washington Post’s Global Opinions section, was killed by a team of 15 Saudis flown in specifically to carry out the attack. Saudi authorities have called the charge ‘‘baseless.’’
That is why this is such a big story, as the pre$$ ignores the deaths in Yemen.
The episode has angered rights activists and press freedom advocates, who have called on the Saudi government to clarify Khashoggi’s whereabouts. It has also raised tensions between regional rivals, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
Turkey has yet to make any evidence public. A private Turkish broadcaster, NTV, reported Monday that police had requested access to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. It was unclear whether the police were granted access or if they would search the diplomatic mission at a later date.
Another report Monday in the daily newspaper Sabah said investigators were also focused on a convoy of diplomatic vehicles that departed from the consulate on the day Khashoggi vanished. A US official said that Turkish investigators believe Khashoggi was probably dismembered, removed in boxes, and flown out of the country.
That is macabre.
In a meeting with The Washington Post’s publisher, Fred Ryan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States said Sunday night that it was impossible such a crime could be covered up by consulate employees ‘‘and we wouldn’t know about it.’’
The ambassador, Prince Khalid bin Salman, reiterated a statement made by other Saudi officials that video cameras had not been recording on the day of Khashoggi’s visit. The ambassador declined to discuss the matter further, saying, ‘‘We don’t want to harm the investigation.’’
Salman said that Khashoggi, who was once close to the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, had ‘‘always been honest.’’ Khashoggi’s criticism of the current Saudi leadership ‘‘has been sincere,’’ adding that he had seen him personally over the past year and had even exchanged text messages with him.
During the meeting, Ryan expressed The Post’s ‘‘grave concern’’ about Khashoggi’s disappearance. He said The Post was committed to discovering the truth and that if the investigation showed any Saudi government involvement, the news organization would view it as a flagrant attack on one of its journalists.
So what is the WaComPo going to do, declare war on Saudi Arabia -- or just promote a war agenda against them in their pages?
Khashoggi had entered the consulate to obtain a document related to his upcoming wedding, according to his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz. She waited outside for hours and called the police when he did not emerge.
Khashoggi had been living in self-imposed exile in the United States since 2017, when he fled Saudi Arabia for fear of arrest.
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"Turkey focuses on Saudi officials in Jamal Khashoggi case" by Carlotta Gall New York Times October 09, 2018
ISTANBUL — Investigators are examining the movements of Saudi officials who flew to Istanbul and went to the Saudi Consulate there on the same day that a Saudi dissident journalist disappeared after going to the building, Turkish authorities said Tuesday.
Turkish officials have said that investigators believe the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, was killed and dismembered at the consulate after going there Oct. 2 to pick up a document. The Saudi government has denied those claims.
Turkish authorities were also looking into the possibility that Khashoggi had been abducted with the help of another country’s intelligence officers and that he could still be alive, the newspaper Sabah, which is close to the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reported Tuesday.
Really, and if so, who?
Only two candidates I can think of that would help.
Saudi officials have agreed to allow Turkish investigators to conduct a search at the consulate, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Tuesday, but the ministry did not offer any information about the timing, nature or extent of such a search.
The Saudi officials who flew to Turkey the day Khashoggi disappeared left the country hours later. Details of their visit were reported at length in Sabah, in an article by two reporters known for their sources in the intelligence and security services.
Two government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, confirmed the broad outlines of the Sabah report, but said they could not confirm all of its details.
At this point we really don't know anything, do we?
It's all he said, she said.
The leaks to Turkish news outlets seemed aimed at maintaining diplomatic pressure on the Saudi government to explain Khashoggi’s disappearance. Erdogan called Monday evening for an explanation, in comments to reporters during a visit to Hungary.
The international community has added to that pressure this week. Vice President Mike Pence tweeted that he was “deeply troubled” by reports about what had happened to Khashoggi.
And Tuesday, the United Nations human rights office called for Saudi Arabia and Turkey to conduct a thorough investigation into the disappearance and to make the results public.
“This is of serious concern, the apparent enforced disappearance of Mr. Khashoggi from the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul,” Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the human rights office, told reporters in Geneva.
It is when it is one of their own!
I'm thinking of all the renditions, black sites, and torture by the West and its allies that have not been brought to light, or only very briefly in a one-day wonder report.
The arbitrary and self-serving nature of this story is starting to stink.
Friends of Khashoggi canceled plans for a funeral prayer for him, which had been expected to turn into a demonstration against Saudi Arabia, and they could not be reached to explain their decision. It was not clear if the move reflected pressure from a government reluctant to add fuel to an international dispute, or uncertainty about his fate.
The Sabah newspaper reported that, “Two Gulfstream IV-type private planes took off from Riyadh on Oct. 2 and landed at Ataturk Airport; one of them before Khashoggi entered the consulate, the other one after he entered.” The report added that the two jets belonged to Sky Prime Aviation Services, a charter company based in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, that has long worked with the government there.
Turkish police were examining recordings taken by security cameras, including around the hotel, and were investigating vehicles that entered and exited the consulate on the day Khashoggi disappeared. Some of those vehicles, which have diplomatic license plates, also entered and exited the residence of the consul, Mohammad al-Otaibi.
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"Supporters of missing Saudi columnist call for US investigation into his disappearance" by Marissa J. Lang Washington Post October 10, 2018
WASHINGTON — Just beyond the metal-framed double doors of the Saudi Embassy in Washington, protesters gathered Wednesday to stand vigil for Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who has not been heard from since he disappeared inside a Saudi consulate in Turkey last week.
They offered memories of the columnist and prayers for his family and fiancee. They demanded answers from the Saudi government — and action from the Trump administration.
‘‘When the Saudis commit acts of violence, it has always been with a wink and a nod from the United States,’’ said Madea Benjamin, the codirector of Code Pink, which organized Wednesday’s protest. ‘‘This did not start with Donald Trump. They have been emboldened for years and it has been a bipartisan problem.’’
OMG!
What are they doing involved in this?
Code Pink is supposed to be a women's rights group.
This action basically outs them as a controlled-opposition unit.
How unfortunate.
Earlier, Representative Gerald Connolly, Democrat of Virginia, and several prominent activists joined a growing chorus of Americans calling on the Trump administration to lead an independent probe into Khashoggi’s sudden disappearance.
Can't they at least wait until the Turks finish investigating?
At a news conference in front of the Washington Post, Connolly said that President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo must demand answers from the Saudi government and make it ‘‘crystal clear’’ that the United States will not stand for the killing of journalists.
Unless we are the ones doing it, like in Iraq.
White House press secretary said senior White House officials, including Pompeo, had contacted Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, on Tuesday, and asked for more information about what happened on Oct. 2, the last day Khashoggi was seen.
‘‘If the Saudis are complicit in this alleged crime, they’re the wrong party to investigate,’’ Connolly said.
Happens all the time all over the world, especially in AmeriKa. Corrupt government and law enforcement investigate their own.
Khashoggi, a prominent journalist and critic of the Saudi government, had gone to the Saudi Consulate that day to finalize papers for his upcoming wedding. Turkish officials believe Khashoggi was killed inside.
The Saudi government has denied involvement, insisting Khashoggi left the consulate alive and well.
‘‘If they did this, they will be held accountable and there will be penalties,’’ Connolly said. ‘‘So far [the Trump administration’s] responses have been awfully anemic and not acceptable. We need a robust, strong, fortified US position that makes it crystal clear that this is not acceptable behavior and those responsible for it will be held to account, no matter how high up it may go.’’
Whatever happened to the Michael Hastings investigation anyway?
Just an accident, right?
At the White House on Wednesday, Trump told reporters it was a ‘‘bad situation,’’ and added, ‘‘we can’t let this happen to reporters, to anybody. . . . We’ll have to find out who did it.’’
Did what?
Khashoggi, a contributor to the Post’s Global Opinion section, fled to the United States more than a year ago after he was banned from tweeting and his writings were censored in Saudi Arabia, friends said. He lived in a sort of self-imposed exile in northern Virginia near Tysons, away from friends and family.
Connolly, who represents the district where Khashoggi lived, said the journalist had been granted asylum in the United States and was under ‘‘American protection.’’
Ooooh, so by that times he was a U.S. operative.
Sure looks like CIA to me.
Turkish investigators suspect a squad of 15 men from Saudi Arabia were involved in the abduction or killing of Khashoggi and have begun to piece together a timeline.
If the allegations against the Saudi government are proven true, Connolly said, ‘‘the Saudis will have to account for themselves and they’re going to pay a high price, I hope, for committing violence against an innocent who trusted a consulate was a safe haven in which to do business — not an abattoir.’’
Connolly said he was not privy to information regarding any possible threats against Khashoggi that had been intercepted by US intelligence, but he recently learned that Khashoggi had visited the Saudi consulate days before his disappearance and ‘‘felt secure’’ enough to return.
‘‘That was the setup,’’ he said. ‘‘If [the United States] had intelligence it should have been shared. That was a life-threatening threat.’’
Protesters held photos of Khashoggi and signs denouncing the monarchy.
Khaled Saffuri, a close friend of Khashoggi for more than two decades and cofounder of the Islamic Free Market Institute, said a senior adviser to the crown prince contacted Khashoggi in June and offered the journalist safe passage home should he choose to return. Saffuri said Khashoggi told him he wouldn’t go.
Ali al-Ahmed, a prominent Saudi analyst and critic, said the United States should hold the crown prince personally responsible for Khashoggi’s disappearance.
‘‘Mohammed bin Salman is the mad king of Saudi Arabia, and Jamal Khashoggi is not his first or his last victim,’’ Ahmed told a crowd of more than three dozen spectators and journalists. ‘‘Tell him he is not welcome here.’’
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"Trump calls relations with Saudi Arabia ‘excellent,’ but Congress isn’t so sure" by Edward Wong, Eric Schmitt and Eileen Sullivan New York Times October 12, 2018
WASHINGTON — The suspected murder of a prominent Saudi journalist exposed a growing rift Thursday between the White House and Congress over US policy on Saudi Arabia, as Republican lawmakers demanded an investigation of Jamal Khashoggi’s whereabouts even as President Trump declared his relations with Riyadh “excellent.”
The Saudi-led, US-backed bombing campaign of Houthi rebels in Yemen — which has killed thousands of civilians — was already a source of tension between Congress and the Trump administration, but last week’s disappearance of Khashoggi, a well-connected Saudi columnist for The Washington Post living in Virginia, has incensed Republicans and Democrats in Congress, who accused the White House of moving too slowly in pressing the kingdom for answers.
Now they care about Yemen!!!
“The Saudis will keep killing civilians and journalists as long as we keep arming and assisting them,” Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said on Twitter on Thursday. “The President should immediately halt arms sales and military support to Saudi Arabia,” but Trump quickly made clear he would not.
“What good does that do us?” Trump asked, speaking to reporters midday in the Oval Office.
“I would not be in favor of stopping a country from spending $110 billion — which is an all-time record — and letting Russia have that money and letting China have that money,” Trump said, referring to an arms deal with the Saudis, brokered last year, that the president has said will lead to new US jobs.
Yeah, well, that's when you realize we've all been had.
All this talk of the Deep State against Trump when he IS the Deep State!
And think of this: if it's all about weapons sales, one can hardly take the U.S. government's profession of wanting peace seriously.
In fact, it is the United States that would need to keep tension high and the wars going. Thus, the creation, funding, and direction of the very groups we are at war with becomes clear. You are not selling weapons if there is peace breaking out.
Earlier Thursday, in an interview with Fox & Friends, Trump said US investigators were working with Turkish and Saudi officials to determine what happened to Khashoggi, who has not been seen since Oct. 2 after he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Turkish officials suspect a Saudi hit squad killed and dismembered Khashoggi inside the consulate.
The president said he and his administration are “looking at it very, very seriously” and expected to have more information soon.
“We want to find out what happened,” Trump said. “He went in and it doesn’t look like he came out.”
“We don’t like it,” Trump said. “I don’t like it. No good.” He added that relations with the kingdom were “excellent.”
The Trump administration was widely criticized for its relative silence on Khashoggi’s disappearance until Monday, six days after he entered the Saudi consulate. Critics said the slow reaction could embolden leaders of Saudi Arabia and other authoritarian nations to carry out human rights abuses.
That makes me think they had something to do with it, and emboldening others to commit rights abuses is just an excuse to blame Trump for this.
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"Trump defends Saudi arms sales amid fury over missing writer" by Matthew Pennington and Catherine Lucey Associated Press October 11, 2018
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump defended continuing huge sales of U.S. weapons to Saudi Arabia on Thursday despite rising pressure from lawmakers to punish the kingdom over the disappearance of a Saudi journalist who lived in the United States and is now feared dead.
As senators pushed for sanctions under a human rights law and also questioned American support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen, Trump appeared reluctant to rock the boat in a relationship that has been key to his strategy in the Middle East. He said withholding sales would hurt the U.S. economy.
‘‘I don’t like stopping massive amounts of money that’s been pouring into our country. They are spending 110 billion on military equipment,’’ Trump said, referring to proposed sales announced in May 2017 when he went to Saudi Arabia in the first overseas trip of his presidency. He warned that the Saudis could instead buy from Russia or China.
Yeah, I remember, and the Saudis were actually making moves to buy the S-400 Russian air defense system before this happened.
Trump maintained that the U.S. is being ‘‘very tough’’ as it looks into the case of Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi leadership and a contributor to The Washington Post who has been missing since Oct. 2. He had entered a Saudi consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul to get marriage paperwork as his fiancee waited outside and hasn’t been seen since.
Turkish officials say they fear Saudi Arabia killed and dismembered Khashoggi but have offered no evidence beyond video footage of the journalist entering the consulate and the arrival in the country of what they describe as a 15-member Saudi team that allegedly targeted him. Saudi Arabia has denied the allegation as ‘‘baseless.’’
Except that "Turkey’s government has told U.S. officials it has audio and video proof that missing Saudi Arabian writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the Washington Post reported Friday," and it's so nice to see the war-promoting pre$$ so concerned now about evidence, especially after Kavanaugh.
Whadda ya' mean who?
In Istanbul, Turkish media said that Saudi royal guards, intelligence officers, soldiers and an autopsy expert had been part of the team flown in and targeting Khashoggi. Those reported details, along with comments from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, appeared aimed at gradually pressuring Saudi Arabia to reveal what happened while also balancing a need to maintain Saudi investments in Turkey and relations on other issues.
Trump, questioned by reporters at the White House, said, ‘‘If it turns out to be as bad as it might be, there are certainly other ways of handling this situation’’ besides canceling arms sales. He did not elaborate.
He said earlier on ‘‘Fox Friends’’ that ‘‘we have investigators over there and we’re working with Turkey’’ and with Saudi Arabia on the case, but he provided no evidence or elaboration.
Meanwhile, there was a clear and growing disconnect between many in Congress, who want tougher action, and the president.
Even before Khashoggi’s disappearance, lawmakers had soured on a Saudi government they view as having a high-handed attitude. Some have been incredulous at its denials of wrongdoing and contention it has no recorded video footage from the consulate showing Khashoggi, who had been living in self-exile in Virginia for the past year.
‘‘There’s a sense of entitlement, I hate to use the word, arrogance, that comes with dealing with them,’’ said Sen. Bob Corker, Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ‘‘Part of that may be that they have an incredibly close relationship with the administration.’’
Well, the Saudis were warned that we would turn on them at some point even as they toadied up and became the third side of the US-Israeli axis in the Middle East, and Corker must get the same feeling when AIPAC comes to his office.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy voiced doubt there would be support in Congress to approve another arms sale to Saudi Arabia — although lawmakers haven’t blocked sales before. He also called for at least a temporary halt in U.S. military support for the Saudi bombing campaign against Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen.
If Saudi Arabia is not telling the truth about Khashoggi, he told reporters, ‘‘why would we believe them that they are not intentionally hitting civilians inside Yemen?’’ Murphy was among seven senators who wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday raising concerns over last month’s certification that a Saudi-led coalition was taking actions to protect civilians despite what the lawmakers described as a dramatic increase in deaths.
It's the same with the media, and all of a sudden Congre$$ has discovered Yemen!
The Trump administration, however, is heavily invested in the long-standing, U.S. relationship with Riyadh. It relies on Saudi support for its Middle East effort to counter Iranian influence and fight extremism. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has cultivated close ties with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and was instrumental in last year’s $110 billion arms package.
That's what it is, isn't it?
He's a friend of Jared!
As long as he is useful, anyway.
Those associations could become a political liability if Prince Mohammed is implicated in Khashoggi’s disappearance. The Washington Post, citing anonymous American officials it said were familiar with U.S. intelligence, said the crown prince had previously ordered an operation to lure Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia and detain him.
The Associated Press could not confirm that report, but a U.S.-based friend of Khashoggi said the journalist had told him he had received a call from an adviser to the Saudi royal court in late May or early June urging him to return to his homeland.
Khaled Saffuri said the adviser, Saud al-Qahtani, told Khashoggi ‘‘that the crown prince wants him back and said you are our son, you are loyal, the crown prince would like you to come and be his adviser, stuff like that.’’
Saffuri said he asked Khashoggi if he would return. ‘‘He said: ‘Are you crazy? I don’t trust him for a minute.’’’
In Turkey on Thursday, a spokesman for President Erdogan told the state-run Anadolu Agency that Turkey and Saudi Arabia would form a ‘‘joint working group’’ to look into the journalist’s disappearance.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said that the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. was traveling to Saudi Arabia, and that the U.S. expects him to provide information about the Khashoggi case when he returns. She added that the U.S. had not requested the ambassador, Prince Khalid bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, to leave.
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Also see: Congress steps up to challenge Trump’s embrace of Saudi Arabia
Related:
"In a kingdom once ruled by an ever-aging rotation of elderly monarchs, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stands out as the youthful face of a youthful nation, but behind the carefully calibrated public-relations campaign pushing images of the smiling prince meeting with the world’s top leaders and business executives lurks a darker side....."
He likened Iran’s Khamenei to Hitler and he’s also hinted Saudi Arabia would be willing to fight Iran, an aggressive posture that has won the support of Trump and forged a close relationship with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner working on the administration’s peace plans for Israel and the Palestinians.
As for Yemen:
"Watchdog accuses Yemen rebels of taking hostages, torture" Associated Press September 25, 2018
CAIRO — An international watchdog on Tuesday accused Yemen’s Shi’ite rebels, known as Houthis, of committing abuses including hostage taking, torture, and enforced disappearances of people they hold in detention.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement it documented 16 cases in which Houthi authorities held people unlawfully, largely to extort money from relatives or to exchange them for prisoners held by opposing forces.
It should be called Juman Rights Watch!!
How quickly was the Saudi war crimes report expelled, huh?!
The New York-based group said Houthi officials have treated detainees brutally, often rising to the level of torture. It urged the rebels to put an end to the abuses.
‘‘The Houthis have added profiteering to their long list of abuses and offenses against the people under their control in Yemen,’’ Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East director, said in the report. ‘‘Some Houthi officials are exploiting their power to turn a profit through detention, torture, and murder.’’
HRW said Houthi authorities did not respond to a request for comment.
HRW said United Arab Emirates forces, forces loyal to the UAE, and Yemeni government forces have also arbitrarily detained, tortured and forcibly disappeared scores of people in the Yemeni conflict.
They also roasted people alive, and one must ask why the AP is pooh-poohing their own reporting in favor of this HRW slop.
The flip side of it is this article was a one-day wonder when Khashoggi has gotten days and days worth of coverage.
Oddly enough, that is where my print paper stopped the session.
The watchdog on Monday urged the United Nations Human Rights Council to renew the mandate of the Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen that investigates human rights violations in the country during its current session in Geneva. It said parties on both sides of Yemen’s conflict are committing laws-of-war violations and human rights abuses with impunity.
Last week, the Arab group at the Human Rights Council balked at efforts to renew the work by the UN-backed ‘‘eminent experts’’ three weeks after the experts said the governments of Yemen, the UAE and Saudi Arabia may have been responsible for war crimes. They also pointed to possible war crimes by the Houthis.
And HRW carried there water, huh?
‘‘The UN Human Rights Council should act to ensure that abuses against Yemeni civilians get continued international scrutiny and that steps are taken to hold violators accountable,’’ said John Fisher, HRW’s Geneva director.
I wouldn't expect any of the allies to end up at the Hague.
Yemen has been locked in a ruinous war pitting the Saudi-led coalition backing the government of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi against the Houthis since March 2015.
The war, which has left at least 10,000 people dead, has devastated impoverished Yemen, turning the Arab nation into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.....
They don't mention the hunger or cholera crisis though.
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"Saudi Arabia and US clash over Khashoggi case" by David D. Kirkpatrick New York Times October 14, 2018
ISTANBUL — The disappearance of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi is opening a rift between Washington and Saudi Arabia as the kingdom blasted President Trump on Sunday for promising “severe punishment” if the royal court was responsible.
If Saudi Arabia “receives any action, it will respond with greater action,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement, citing the oil-rich kingdom’s “influential and vital role in the global economy.”
And their position as the leading funder of terror groups, which is even more of a concern.
Who knows?
Maybe Trump will declassify the Sword of Damocles 9/11 report that implicates the Saudi government in the 9/11 cover story.
Saudi Arabia “affirms its total rejection of any threats and attempts to undermine it, whether by threatening to impose economic sanctions, using political pressures, or repeating false accusations,” the Foreign Ministry said.
The “accusations” at issue are the claims of Turkish officials that a team of Saudi agents killed and dismembered Khashoggi, a US resident and columnist for The Washington Post who was last seen entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on the afternoon of Oct. 2.
The Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and other Saudi officials have said they have no knowledge of Khashoggi’s fate.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has demanded an explanation, but other Turkish officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity and citing confidential intelligence, have let out a steady stream of leaks detailing what they say was Khashoggi’s brutal murder at the hands of a 15-member Saudi team sent to Turkey that day on two private jets with the mission to kill him.
Those leaks have contributed to rising pressure from Congress and other Western governments for Saudi Arabia to explain what happened. Although security camera footage shows Khashoggi entering the consulate, no evidence has emerged that shows him exiting. His fiancée has said she waited outside into the night.
On Sunday, Britain, France, and Germany issued a joint statement demanding a “credible investigation to establish the truth about what happened, and — if relevant — to identify those bearing responsibility for the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, and ensure that they are held to account.”
This from the people who hollered Russia after the Skripal false flag.
The foreign ministers of all three European governments said in the statement that they “expect the Saudi government to provide a complete and detailed response” and that “we have conveyed this message directly to the Saudi authorities.”
In Washington, lawmakers of both parties had already demanded some sanctions if Saudi Arabia is proved responsible for Khashoggi’s death, and on Sunday, more added their voices.
Rubio was on “Meet the Press.”
The threats of retaliation from the West sent the Saudi stock market plunging as much as 7 percent Sunday, the first day of the business week in the kingdom.
Putting the $queeze on Saudi, 'eh?
The Saudi statement criticizing Trump did not repeat the previous assertions of the crown prince and others that Khashoggi had left the consulate freely, but the statement also offered no further information about his disappearance.
On Friday, a Saudi delegation led by Prince Khaled bin Faisal visited Ankara to meet with Erdogan. Prince Khaled, 78, is a senior member of the family, the governor of Mecca, and an adviser to King Salman, so his role in the mission underscored the seriousness of the crisis in the eyes of the king, but Prince Khaled’s delegation left Ankara after a few hours without making any statement. Then late Sunday, King Salman himself called Erdogan. A semiofficial Turkish news agency said they had discussed the importance of a joint investigation.
It looks like the Saudis and the Turks are trying to diffuse this thing.
Trump has embraced Saudi Arabia as his administration’s pre-eminent Arab ally. He made Riyadh the destination of his first foreign trip as president, and his White House has been especially supportive of the 33-year-old crown prince. Trump repeatedly expressed his confidence in the young prince even while he was still challenging older family members for dominance of the royal court, and the president’s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has reportedly formed an especially close partnership with Crown Prince Mohammed, who holds most of the power inside the kingdom and acts as day-to-day ruler on behalf of his elderly father.
Until now, Crown Prince Mohammed has had nothing but high praise for Trump, even after potentially awkward statements like his campaign pledge to ban Muslims from entering the United States or his more recent demands that Saudi Arabia pay more for its own defense.
Trump’s statements about Khashoggi, however, may have touched a nerve.
On Sunday, in an interview with CBS News, he appeared to treat the allegations about the missing dissident with new seriousness.
Trump, though, repeated his opposition to any suggestion that the United States curtail its weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, one of the biggest arms buyers in the world. If the United States cut off the lucrative arms sales, “we would be punishing ourselves,” Trump said.....
So we will punish the people of Yemen instead.
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Time to change the subject in Turkey.
"Saudis ready to concede writer was slain, report says" by Eileen Sullivan and David D. Kirkpatrick New York Times October 15, 2018
WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia was preparing an alternative explanation of the fate of a dissident journalist on Monday, saying he died at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago in an interrogation gone wrong, according to a person familiar with the kingdom’s plans. In Washington, President Trump echoed the possibility that Jamal Khashoggi was the victim of “rogue killers.”
Entering an embassy under official government cover, huh?
Yeah, you know fake news when you see it (did his nose grow?).
The shifting storyline defied earlier details that have emerged in the case, including signs that he was murdered and dismembered. Among other things, Turkish officials have said, an autopsy specialist carrying a bone saw was among 15 Saudi operatives who flew in and out of Istanbul the day Khashoggi disappeared.
The new explanation, whatever its truth, seemed intended to ease the political crisis that Khashoggi’s disappearance has created for Saudi Arabia. The new story could also defuse some criticism of the Trump administration, which has refused to back down from billions of dollars in weapons sales to the kingdom and as of Monday was still planning to attend a glittering Saudi investment forum next week, and it could help Turkey, where a shaky economy would benefit from a financial infusion that low-interest loans from Riyadh could provide, but the theory was widely dismissed among Khashoggi’s friends, human rights advocates, and some on Capitol Hill, who noted that Saudi officials had denied his death for two weeks, including assertions by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last week and the king himself Monday.
It's a long paragraph, but is so telling of the New York Times and larger AmeriKan pre$$.
My blood pressure must have zoomed when I blew a gasket regarding those first six words.
Yup, the new explanation, whatever its truth.
What it tells you is the New York Times doesn't care about the truth. All they care to report -- all that is fit for them, you might say -- is whatever political propaganda or power play is driving the agenda. That anyone would ever believe a word from them astonishes me.
Beyond that, the propaganda immediately begins to point the finger back at Turkey by impLYING that Turkey somehow benefits here.
“Been hearing the ridiculous ‘rogue killers’ theory was where the Saudis would go with this,” Senator Christopher Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, wrote in a Twitter post. “Absolutely extraordinary they were able to enlist the President of the United States as their PR agent to float it.”
Trump spoke with King Salman of Saudi Arabia on Monday morning in a 20-minute phone call. The president said the king denied any knowledge of what had happened to Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post who had been critical of the crown prince.
“It sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers — who knows,” Trump said, speaking to reporters as he headed to visit areas in Georgia and Florida that were ravaged by Hurricane Michael.
Yeah, who knows?
Probably never will, either.
Related:
"President Trump marveled at the roofless homes and uprooted trees he saw Monday while touring Florida Panhandle communities ravaged by the force of Hurricane Michael. Trump toured devastated coastal communities by air, land, and foot before he and the first lady helped hand out bottled water at a Federal Emergency Management Agency aid distribution center. The state is important to Trump not only for his hopes of being reelected in 2020 but also as he campaigns aggressively to help Republicans expand their slim 51-49 majority in the US Senate. Fellow Republican and Florida Governor Rick Scott is running for the Senate, partly at Trump’s urging, and is in a close contest against Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson just weeks before Election Day. Scott shadowed Trump throughout Monday’s visit. Trump and his wife, Melania, initially saw uprooted trees and houses topped with blue tarps after his helicopter lifted off from Eglin Air Force Base near Valparaiso, his first stop after leaving Washington, but the severity of the damage worsened significantly as Trump approached Mexico Beach, which was nearly wiped off the map after taking a direct hit from the hurricane....."
We all know what that conjures up for imagery, and she looked jetlagged (maybe it was the media obsession).
The death toll is 17 and the pre$$ spins his visit as a political motivation (never did that to Obama the consoler).
Also see: French flash floods kill at least 11
That's not uncommon for this time of year, so there is really nothing to see except the muck and mire. I'd say go have a beer, but you have to behave responsibly.
Maybe that's why the Saudis are so brutal, huh? No booze.
Trump also said he told the king: “The world is watching. The world is talking, and this is very important to get to the bottom of it.” The Saudi state news service reported a different take on the conversation, in which Trump praised the cooperation between the Saudis and Turkish officials as they investigate Khashoggi’s disappearance.
Then I'm likely to think it is not at all.
Turkish officials have said Khashoggi was killed and dismembered after he disappeared in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago.
Later Monday, a person familiar with the Saudi government’s plans said that Khashoggi was mistakenly killed during an interrogation ordered by a Saudi intelligence official who was a friend of the crown prince. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Crown Prince Mohammed had approved interrogating or even forcing Khashoggi to return to Saudi Arabia under duress, but, the person said, the Saudi intelligence official went too far in eagerly seeking to prove himself in secretive operations, then sought to cover up the botched job.
Looks like that is going to fly with the NYT, whatever its truth.
Azzam Tamimi, an Islamist friend of Khashoggi, called the “rogue” theory “disastrous” for the credibility of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
“The Turks have leaked so much that it is inconceivable that they would settle for less than telling the world exactly what happened,” said Tamimi, who met Khashoggi for lunch in London the day before he disappeared.
Actually, I don't see how this damages him at all. If he is forced to accept this cockamamie "theory," everyone can see it for the pile of bull that it is. If they were used as a conduit to put pressure on Saudi that is one thing, but it could also be that they are standing up against the empire and don't very much appreciate their country being used for dastardly deeds. So they blew the whistle.
Khashoggi’s fate has transfixed official Washington, bedeviled the Saudis, helped revive Erdogan’s international reputation, and threatened core foreign policy priorities of the Trump administration.
Look at that spin!
Trump dispatched Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Riyadh on Monday to meet with the Saudi king. “Determining what happened to Jamal Khashoggi is something of great importance to the president,” said Heather Nauert, the State Department spokeswoman.
People of Yemen, no.
The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Khalid bin Salman, left Washington last week, returned to Riyadh and will not be returning, a current and a former US official said Monday. It was not clear when he might be replaced, or by whom. Prince Khalid is the crown prince’s younger brother.
The Saudi Embassy in Washington also canceled its National Day party, which was scheduled for Thursday.
Within five days of Khashoggi’s Oct. 2 disappearance, Turkish security officials claimed anonymously that they had obtained evidence that the journalist was killed inside the consulate. The evidence never surfaced, however, and the claims stopped after a sudden increase in high-level diplomatic contacts between Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
It's so nice to see the NYT take up the gauntlet for Brett Kavanaugh!
That frustrated US intelligence and diplomatic officials, who worried that the Turks were citing the evidence as leverage to get loans from the Saudis.
That is where my print copy ended, so by the end of this article we are on the road to Turkey made this up to get loans they could have gotten without this!!!
Talk about lame!
It left me wondering when Khashoggi’s double is going to show up!
Yeah, "whatever its truth....."
US intelligence agencies had previously intercepted communications of Saudi officials discussing a plan to draw Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia from his home in exile in the Washington area and then detain him, a former senior US official said last week. Those intercepts were shared with senators in classified materials last week, making it impossible to suppress them.
OOOOOOOOOOOOH!
Now the Saudis know we were spying on them.
Thought that stuff went out with Obama.
It is highly unlikely an attempted rendition of Khashoggi could have been carried out without the knowledge of Saudi rulers.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld?
For the Trump administration, Khashoggi’s case risks top foreign policy priorities. Trump has repeatedly said he does not want to risk what he claims is $110 billion in arms sales to the Saudis, and ensuring Riyadh’s willingness to increase oil production so that coming sanctions on Iranian oil do not lead to a surge in gas prices has been at least as important.
They really got one of their barrels over on us, huh?
What do you think fuels the U.S. war machine anyway?
Trump previously said the episode would not have an effect on US relations with Saudi Arabia, a close ally in the Middle East, but Trump was already facing pressure from some in Congress to respond to the Saudis with economic sanctions.
Let's just sanction the whole world, hey!
--more--"
Before going any further I would just like to put it on record that I find the Saudi regime the most odious, backward, and tyrannical governments on the face of the earth. There really is no other comparison. It goes beyond the sick slaying of this western pre$$ asset to the regular beheadings, oppressions, military aggressions, and fulfilling the funding and manpower requests of the very "terrorists" we are claiming to fight.
It's all a shell game, folks, and it's just fine if you want endless war for weapons sales and global dominance.
"Saudi conference puts local execs on the hot seat" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff October 12, 2018
“Davos in the Desert” once seemed like the hottest ticket for the C-suite set.
Now, it might be too hot to touch.
This conference, formally known as the Future Investment Initiative, was supposed to draw a who’s who of corporate America to Riyadh later this month, in part to marvel at the business opportunities available in modern-day Saudi Arabia, but the disappearance and suspected killing of a journalist has changed that storyline.
Whatever its truth.
In the past few days, a number of media outlets and prominent executives suspended their participation or pulled out completely from the Saudi government-backed conference. They raised concerns about what happened to dissident Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist last seen at a Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Turkish officials blame a Saudi security team for his death; Saudi officials deny any involvement.
Well, not now.
Several Boston business leaders had been expected to pack their bags for Riyadh before this new controversy broke. Among them: Bain Capital co-chairman Steve Pagliuca, State Street president Ron O’Hanley, top General Electric exec Alex Dimitrief, and Raytheon CEO Tom Kennedy.
Organizers included those names on their list of high-profile speakers on the event’s website as recently as Thursday night, but by Friday afternoon, as defections began to mount, the list was scrubbed from the site. It’s hard to know if the local execs still plan to attend, judging from all the silence: Their spokespeople either didn’t return calls and e-mails or simply declined to comment.
Not everyone is being quiet. Viacom CEO Bob Bakish, whose media company is controlled by Shari Redstone, said he has decided not to go. Venture capitalist Steve Case and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi also bailed, citing the mystery around Khashoggi’s disappearance. CNN, Bloomberg, and The New York Times walked away as well.
Soon Saudi will be an enemy -- in the pre$$, at least!
Several major US consulting firms are listed as either “summit partners” or “knowledge partners” for the conference, including Boston Consulting Group and Bain & Co. Reps from those two companies did not return calls seeking comments. More silence.
US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said he still planned to attend, but many of the listed speakers simply seemed to be ducking reporters’ inquiries entirely.
I don't blame them.
Meanwhile, prominent leaders are cutting ties with other Saudi ventures. Among them: former US energy secretary Ernie Moniz, who ended his participation in a board overseeing the launch of a “smart city” in northwestern Saudi Arabia, at least until Khashoggi’s disappearance can be satisfactorily explained. US Representative Jim McGovern, meanwhile, issued a statement saying he plans to introduce a bill banning US military aid and sales to Saudi Arabia unless Khashoggi is found alive and free.
Good luck getting that passed. He's my rep, but I'm voting for the Republican woman running against him in November.
This conference was supposed to showcase Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s efforts to modernize his desert kingdom, to make it a magnet for Western investments and show that the Saudi economy doesn’t just run on oil, but the Khashoggi case will cast a long shadow, raising doubts that maybe this new Saudi Arabia isn’t so modern after all.
Not after the barbaric way in which they disposed of Khashoggi.
--more--"
The $trange thing is Bo$ton is starting to look like $audi Arabia.
"More Wall Street executives pull out of Saudi conference, but Mnuchin plans to attend" New York Times October 15, 2018
WASHINGTON — The disappearance of a Saudi dissident journalist has put Steven Mnuchin, the US Treasury secretary, in an increasingly awkward position as he prepares to attend an investment conference in Riyadh next week.
Several top Wall Street executives have pulled out of participating in the summit meeting, known as Davos in the Desert, but a Treasury official said Monday that Mnuchin still planned to attend. Mnuchin’s participation there is part of a six-country, weeklong swing through the Middle East that is focused on combating terrorist financing.
Then he would have to go to Saudi Arabia to tell them to cut it off!
The trip is crucial to retaining good relations with Saudi Arabia as both countries try to work together to combat illicit financial activities in the Middle East that help fund terrorism, but Mnuchin is now wrestling with the economic and national security benefits of remaining in the Saudi government’s good stead with the risks of attending amid questions about the fate of the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.
HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!
The analogy of the fox guarding the chicken coop mean anything to you?
As for the rest, the U.S. needs to remain in their good stead, huh?
Why?
President Trump raised the possibility on Monday that “rogue killers” were behind the disappearance of a Saudi dissident journalist, and not the kingdom’s leaders — a theory echoed separately by a person familiar with Saudi plans to blame an intelligence services official and shield Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from responsibility.
Trump said King Salman of Saudi Arabia denied any knowledge during a 20-minute phone call on Monday about what happened to the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi.
Turkish officials have said Khashoggi was killed and dismembered after he disappeared in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago.
“It sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers — who knows,” Trump said, speaking to reporters as he headed to visit areas in Georgia and Florida that were ravaged by Hurricane Michael.
The president’s comments opened a window for King Salman and Prince Mohammed to stand by their denials of involvement in Khashoggi’s disappearance.
Whatever its truth.
Seasoned observers of Middle East politics, including some at senior levels of the Turkish government, have speculated for days about the likelihood that the royal court would seek to accuse a “rogue” operator within the Saudi security services of killing Khashoggi.
One person familiar with the Saudi plans said Monday that the Saudi government was preparing to describe a scenario that would protect the prince from any blame.
This has become disgusting!
The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the plans, but he said the royal court would soon put out a narrative that an official within the kingdom’s intelligence services — who happened to be a friend of Prince Mohammed — had carried out the killing.
I am so sick of being lied to and propagandized by official narratives and the conventional wisdom and agenda-pushing that comes along with it!
And you wonder why I'm not believing anything in the New York Times of pre$$ anymore?
The person said Prince Mohammed had approved an interrogation or rendition of Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia, but, he said, the Saudi intelligence official was tragically incompetent as he eagerly sought to prove himself in secretive operations.
So how did he kill him?
Waterboard?
All this fallout has taken attention off the actual act!
Mnuchin’s staff has been closely monitoring the situation and awaiting additional evidence about the fate of Khashoggi before making a final decision; however, the trip appeared more likely to move forward after President Trump buttressed Saudi denials that it was responsible for Khashoggi’s disappearance, with his “rogue killers” comment as he dispatched his secretary of state to meet with King Salman of Saudi Arabia.
Yeah, whatever its truth.
On Monday, the chief executives of the Blackstone Group and BlackRock canceled plans to attend an investment conference in Saudi Arabia next week, joining Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase as the latest Wall Street titans to pull back in the wake of the disappearance, and potential murder of Khashoggi.
Look at this, now he may even be alive still!
Only a "potential" murder now!
Mnuchin’s decision to attend is prompting criticism, including from lawmakers like Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, who say the Treasury secretary’s participation will convey to the world that the United States approves of Saudi Arabia’s actions. As the top US economic official, Mnuchin’s presence would send a significant signal about how the United States views human rights issues, but the timing of the conference comes at a delicate moment of economic diplomacy, making the decision even more fraught.
You have to laugh anytime the phrase human rights and United States are together in the same sentence.
Talk about a rogue killer!
The Treasury Department oversees the United States’ sanctions arsenal, and Mnuchin has been aggressively urging US allies to step up pressure against Iran after Trump’s withdrawal from an international agreement signed in 2015 to curb its nuclear program. Saudi Arabia has been supportive of that decision, and its influence in the region is needed to help isolate Iran.
Yeah, the human rights stuff running up against the top foreign policy priority of the United States, wars for the Jews.
Another important factor is oil. Prices have been spiking this year and the prospect of higher fuel costs in the United States ahead of the November midterm elections is problematic for Republicans. Relations between Trump and the Saudis, whom he courted lavishly last year, have been strained in recent months after the president publicly pressured Saudi Arabia to ramp up oil production. Earlier this month, Trump raised eyebrows again when he suggested that Saudi Arabia should be spending more on defense.
“We protect Saudi Arabia,” he said at a rally in Mississippi, adding that he told King Salman that he would not last two weeks without US military support.
Not if we attack them.
--more--"
If only there was some way to get Saudi Arabia out of the fuels market:
"The Trump administration is considering using West Coast military bases or other federal properties as transit points for shipments of US coal and natural gas to Asia, as officials seek to bolster the domestic energy industry and circumvent environmental opposition to fossil fuel exports. The proposal would advance the administration’s agenda of establishing American ‘‘energy dominance’’ on the world stage and underscores a willingness to intervene in markets to make that happen. It’s also tantamount to an end-run around West Coast officials who have rejected private-sector efforts to build new coal ports in their states. A Democratic senator from Oregon and environmentalists blasted the proposal as undercutting local communities....."
That was a right wing argument under Obama, and I'm told ‘‘the military is not a roving force to do whatever Trump finds politically expedient,’’ but he is commander in chief!
Almost forgot about the reporters:
"Bulgarian journalist, host of anticorruption TV show, is beaten and killed" by Marc Santora New York Times October 08, 2018
When the body of a 30-year-old woman, bruised, beaten, and raped, was discovered Saturday in a park in the city of Ruse in northeastern Bulgaria, the grisly crime scene stunned a nation where corruption is endemic but murder is relatively rare.
The victim was identified Sunday as Viktoria Marinova, a journalist who was the host of a new talk show called “Detector” that offered a venue for investigative reporters, and national shock over her brutal death quickly spread to international concern.
Not as much as Khashoggi, though.
Although there was some disagreement about the extent of Marinova’s role in investigating corruption, the questions surrounding her death reflected the tense atmosphere for journalists in the region: Two reporters in the European Union — Jan Kuciak in Slovakia and Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta — have been killed in the past year because of the work they were doing to expose graft at the highest levels of government.
Bulgarian officials condemned the attack on Marinova, but they were also insistent that there was nothing to suggest that she had been killed because of her work. They said there was no evidence that she had been threatened, and noted that her car keys, her cellphone, and parts of her clothing were missing.
“It is about rape and murder,” said Interior Minister Mladen Marinov, a viewpoint that was shared by Prime Minister Boiko Borisov.
Marinova was last seen alive Saturday morning, when she had coffee with friends and then went for a run along the Danube River.
The prosecutor general, Sotir Tsatsarov, told reporters in Ruse on Monday that nothing would be ruled out, but he also said that it was unlikely the killing was connected to her work.
Still, some EU lawmakers and press freedom advocates were hesitant to accept the government’s suggestion that Marinova’s work was coincidental to her death.
The brutal crimes shook Ruse, where murders are rare. There were only five murders last year in the small city of about 150,000. Across Bulgaria, which has a population of a little more than 7 million, police reported 260 killings. In 2016, there were 1.1 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in Bulgaria. In the United States, the murder rate in 2016 was 5.3 per 100,000.
Bulgaria has been ranked among the most corrupt nations in the European Union and among the worst in terms of press freedom. More than 10 years after joining the bloc, it has reported only limited progress in turning the tide against graft.
The Center for the Study of Democracy, based in the capital, Sofia, outlined in a report last year a portrait of a state so riddled with graft that 1 in 5 adults, or 1.3 million people, were thought to have taken part in a corrupt transaction, such as paying or receiving a bribe.
A 2016 report from the research organization RAND Europe estimated that every year, the country loses $7 billion to $12 billion because of corruption, a fifth of its gross domestic product.
At the same time, the number of independent media outlets reporting on corruption has fallen.
That is where my print copy ended the article, and I can't help but wonder if Bulgaria is an ally of Russia.
Isn't it also in Turkey's neighborhood?
The Union of Publishers in Bulgaria, in a report issued in May, found that “growing collusion between publishers, oligarchs and political parties during the past decade has resulted in a major decline in the press freedom.”
Teodor Zahov, the organization’s president, said in a statement that, “The pressure on independent media has been systematic for the past 10 years. It is so sophisticated and lacking in transparency that some people don’t understand it and others don’t believe it,” he said.
Like the blogs being shadow-banned or eliminated.
In that dismal environment, international concern over Marinova’s killing — particularly in the European Union, which has prided itself on its support for press freedom — was swift to develop.
“We need to find out quickly whether the murder is connected with Marinova’s research into the misuse of EU funds,” said Sven Giegold, a German member of the European Parliament. “Freedom of the press is in acute danger in Europe if research into corruption ends in death.”
Oh, so that is what she was looking into!
That's why this was made to look like a rape-murder!
Those are big-time players she was hitting at!
I suspect press coverage of this will quickly fade.
The killings of Kuciak in Slovakia and Caruana Galizia in Malta caused alarm across the Continent, coming at a time when a new brand of professed populist leaders in the region have used increasingly caustic language to attack reporters, especially those probing corruption.
OMG, they are going to play this into a sympathy card after all their lies!
They are as bad as the people who ordered this woman's murder.
In February, 27-year-old Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova, also 27, were shot dead after he began digging into connections between top government officials and organized crime. Police have said the killings were connected to Kuciak’s work, and they recently arrested several people suspected of involvement, including one man that authorities believe was a paid hit man. He was identified last week as Tomas Szabo, a former police officer who spent nine years on the force but who was reportedly having financial difficulties.
Of course!
Related:
Slovak investigative reporter, girlfriend slain
Slain Slovak journalist worked on story of links to mafia
At least they got a new government now!
Prosecutors said Szabo and his accomplices were paid “at least 70,000 euros,” or about $80,000, for the killing of Kuciak. They believe his fiancée was not targeted but was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Authorities in Slovakia say they have narrowed the list of those suspected of ordering the killing but declined to offer any details while the investigation was in progress, noting that the plot may have also involved targeting a high-ranking prosecutor involved in prosecuting corruption.
Public anger over the death of Kuciak led to large protests and ultimately forced the prime minister, Robert Fico, to resign.
Hmmmm.
Kuciak’s murder came several months after one of Malta’s best-known investigative journalists, Caruana Galizia, 53, was killed when a bomb blew up her car. She was also looking into allegations of money laundering and fraud among the country’s business and political elite. Three men were arrested and accused of planting the bomb, but that investigation appears to be stalled and there has been no public comment on who might have ordered the killing.
Yeah, we know, law enforcement and government are not allowed to investigate certain areas.
The first episode of Marinova’s program aired Sept. 30 and featured two investigative journalists — Dimitar Stoyanov from the Bivol.bg website and Attila Biro from the Romanian Rise Project — discussing their investigation into allegations of fraud involving EU funds linked to prominent businessmen and politicians in Bulgaria.....
--more--"
Bulgarian television journalist Viktoria Marinova (AFP/Getty Images).
Wow.
What a loss to the world on so many levels.
"Arrest made in Bulgarian journalist’s death" by James McAuley Washington Post October 10, 2018
SOFIA, Bulgaria — Bulgarian authorities identified on Wednesday a male suspect in his early 20s in the rape and murder of journalist Viktoria Marinova, a case that sent shock waves through Europe and triggered anxieties about press freedom around the world.
We have been told it has nothing to do with that.
Authorities are now saying, however, that the motive was likely sexual assault, not an attack on a journalist, although the investigation is ongoing.
The suspect was detained in Germany and has since been charged with rape and murder.
Marinova, 30, was attacked on Saturday as she was jogging in a park in Ruse, a small city in northeastern Bulgaria. Her professional identity as a host on TVN, a local television program, focused on investigative journalism and immediately stoked fears about retributions against journalists exposing corruption schemes, especially in Eastern Europe.
They are using her to flog that agenda.
In the past year, two other investigative journalists were killed in EU member states, but early Wednesday, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov and Interior Minister Mladen Marinov said that investigators had interviewed her family, colleagues, and friends and that ‘‘there is no apparent link to her work.’’
I think there is, but they can't go there.
The suspect, named Severin Krasimirov, from Ruse, was born in 1997 and had a criminal record that dated back to 2007, including charges of theft.
Well, he still does, right?
According to Bulgarian officials, Krasimirov fled the scene and headed to Germany, where he was ultimately apprehended.
Initial lab results linked his DNA to samples found at the crime scene, authorities said.
Bulgaria is the most corrupt member state in the EU, according to global corruption watchdog Transparency International. It also ranks 111th out of 180 in terms of press freedom, the lowest in the EU, according to Reporters Without Borders, a French organization devoted to the protection of journalists.
Marinova, a former lifestyle journalist, had only recently transitioned into her role as the host of a program called ‘‘Detector,’’ focused on investigations. That program had only featured one episode before her death, and it had merely broadcast interviews with other reporters who discussed their own investigations, stories that had already broken weeks before.
Even if Marinova’s murder proves unrelated to her work, many local commentators were quick to point out that crimes against women are endemic in Bulgaria.
Even if sounds like whatever its truth, and now they are turning it into a #MeToo moment!
Earlier this year, the government refused to ratify the Istanbul Convention, a Council of Europe initiative aiming to battle and prevent violence against women, after Bulgaria’s constitutional court ruled that the convention contradicted the country’s constitution.
So far, the Istanbul Convention has been ratified by 33 European states.
I guess that would get you back to Turkey then, huh?
--more--"
Related:
"A former veteran Senate Intelligence Committee security director pleaded guilty Monday to lying to FBI agents about his contact with a reporter during a federal leak investigation. James Wolfe, 57, pleaded guilty to one count of lying to investigators about using encrypted messaging in October 2017 to tell a reporter about a subpoena issued by the committee. US District Judge Ketanji Jackson said Wolfe faces a possible sentence of zero to six months in jail for his conviction."
That's all, and why didn't the Globe identify the reporter in that blurb?
The muddy water rattled them, huh?
"The body of a 45-year-old woman was found in an open Rochester, N.H., storage unit at about midnight Sunday morning, according to the New Hampshire attorney general’s office. Police found the body of Jessica Purslow of Rochester inside a unit at the Rochester Self Storage facility on South Main Street after receiving a call about an open unit, said spokeswoman Kate Spiner in a statement. Purslow’s death is being considered suspicious and an autopsy was planned Sunday, according to Spiner......"
"Those who knew of Jessica Purslow have been left with many questions since her body was found in a storage unit in Rochester, N.H., over the weekend. “I’m just in shock,” said Purslow’s longtime friend, Shannon Foster, 49. “I don’t know what happened.” Police found Purslow’s body inside a storage unit at Rochester Self Storage on South Main Street, and an autopsy was conducted on Oct. 7, according to the New Hampshire attorney general’s office. The chief medical examiner determined that the cause of Purslow’s death was a single gunshot wound, and “the manner of death is pending further investigation,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement. Authorities are also seeking the public’s help in the investigation. Anyone who was in the area of the storage facility this past weekend or who has any information regarding the recent whereabouts and activities of Purslow is asked to contact Detective Pat Emerson at the Rochester Police Department, according to the attorney general’s office. Foster said Purslow, 45, was a mother of three children and a devoted grandmother. “She was a good mom,” she said....."
Was she an investigative reporter?
We all know whom to blame:
"Trump’s attacks on journalists seed violence" October 09, 2018
Journalists around the world are increasingly fair game these days at the hands of their autocratic governments — or at the hands of just plain thugs. And President Trump’s assaults on journalists as “the enemy of the people” are surely exacerbating the problem.
The latest case in point is the mysterious disappearance of Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul Oct. 2 to obtain a document in advance of his upcoming wedding to his Turkish fiancé and hasn’t been heard from since. Khashoggi, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post, has been a frequent critic of the Saudi government.
Now Turkey — itself consistently among the world’s leading jailers of journalists — has at least stepped up to demand the “full cooperation” of Saudi consular officials in the investigation. And while a surveillance photo has surfaced of Khashoggi entering the consulate, Saudi officials have offered no visual evidence of his ever having exited.
We will get to the jailing of journalists later.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also issued a statement calling on the Saudis to support “a thorough investigation” and to be “transparent” about its results.
Meanwhile the body of Bulgarian journalist Viktoria Marinova was discovered in a park there over the weekend. The fact that Bulgaria ranks 111 out of 180 on the press freedom index of Reporters Without Borders led many to speculate that her brutal murder was no random crime. Her recently launched TV talk show has given a new voice to investigative journalists who are reporting on the rampant corruption in that country.
Now who is the "conspiracy theorist," huh?
Earlier in the year reporters in two other European Union countries, Malta and Slovakia, were killed, targeted for their investigative reporting on government corruption.
And the pre$$ dropped their coverage right quick!
If they really cared, wouldn't they be demanding answers?
In Myanmar recently, two Reuters journalists were sentenced to seven years in prison for what government officials insist was the illegal possession of official documents. The two reporters had been covering the brutal crackdown on the Rohingya minority in that country.
Yeah, Myanmar is today's featured enemy after they discovered mass graves.
Must be cozying up to the Chinese too much, and you know it is Saudi Arabia behind the unrest in the Rakhine state, right?
Egypt has a new law that allows its media regulatory agency to block any online news or social media site that is charged with engaging in “fake news” or is deemed a threat to national security. Among the 500 sites already blocked were two belonging to a former board member of the Journalists’ Union.
Egypt is not only an ally, but an Israeli lynchpin so leave them alone.
As for fake news, the decades of of war-promoting, agenda-pushing lies are their own fault!
On Tuesday, David Kaye, the UN special rapporteur for freedom of expression, in an interview with the Associated Press decried the “global epidemic” of the stigmatization of journalists. “Whether it’s the United States and Donald Trump calling them ‘the enemy of the people’ or it’s [President] Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines doing much the same thing . . . journalists are under threat.”
Not all of them, although those that tell the truth are stigmatized.
When I first began this I thought they were friends, but they were always the enemy and the enemy of our enemy is..... well, you know the rest.
American journalists are still, relatively speaking, the lucky ones — beneficiaries of the First Amendment and of an independent judiciary committed to uphold and enforce it, but words do matter. They matter to autocrats around the globe who now feel newly empowered to disparage, imprison, block, or even perhaps slaughter those journalists committed to telling the hard truths about the regimes they cover.
Yeah, how quickly they forget Eric Holder jailing and spying on them!
It's the point in the editorial where a healthy profanity inviting the Globe to please itself becomes useful.
As for words mattering, they sure as hell do when they are war lies blared from the front pages leading to the invasion of a sovereign nation.
Jamal Khashoggi may be the latest victim of that “autocrats unleashed” syndrome, and the Trump administration owes him — and those who love him — more than empty words in determining his fate, but beyond that, the world must know that this continuing abrogation of American values coming from the Oval Office is not who we as a people are. We as journalists and as citizens will continue to espouse the same freedoms — and protections — for our colleagues around the world as we enjoy here.
Give yourself an A+ for humility, Globe.
Btw, the self-aggrandizing, self-adulation is also a turn off.
--more--"
Just wondering if there are any allies Turkey can turn to:
"Amid Kremlin victories, Putin fails to persuade West to ease sanctions" by Neil MacFarquhar New York Times August 12, 2018
MOSCOW — From Moscow to Washington to capitals in between, the past few days showcased the way President Vladimir Putin of Russia nimbly exploits differences between the United States and its allies — yet also accentuated where he falls short.
President Trump on Friday had barely finished announcing new sanctions on Turkey before Putin was on the phone with his Turkish counterpart, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
It was vintage Putin, exploiting an opportunity to divide the West. Yet recent events also highlighted the downside to Putin’s geopolitical escapades. The Western sanctions he hoped to get lifted have only been tightened, pushing the ruble down to its lowest levels in years.
Even he is subject to the pre$$ure of the U.S. empire, and look it's another ax-grinding article by The New York Times.
At home, Putin’s standing with Russians is suffering.
He just won an election with about 70% of the vote, but whatever its truth there will be western-backed protests for whatever reason.
(exasperated sigh)
For all the strategic success Putin has had — including diminishing NATO and the European Union by bolstering populist governments in Europe as well as Middle East autocrats — he has failed to persuade or pressure the West to lift successive waves of US and European economic sanctions imposed on Russia since its 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Yeah, except he didn't annex Crimea and the continued repeating of lie is really.... oh, yeah, whatever its truth.
New York Times isn't really interested in that, is it?
In fact, the State Department threatened last week to enact yet another round of such measures, just days after the US Senate brandished its own.
The European Union, some of whose members had signaled in the past few years that they were ready to consider granting Moscow some relief, has held tough on sanctions, especially in the wake of the British government’s finding that Russia was responsible for an attempted assassination on British soil using a banned nerve agent.
The U.S. strong-armed their European toadies out of that.
Putin could certainly claim a tactical victory after his call to Turkey. Erdogan, whose country is a NATO member, soon crowed that Turkey’s growing economic and military relations with Russia “make us stronger,” while he fulminated against the “economic war” waged by Washington, but the failure to make progress in freeing the Russian economy from the sanctions is a setback for Putin both domestically and globally.
That is their Putin-hating spin, and I'm sick of it.
In Trump, Putin and others in the Kremlin thought that they had a get-out-of-sanctions-free card. The first summit between the two leaders, in Helsinki last month, reinforced Russian expectations that Trump would fulfill his campaign promise to mend ties.
It's what made me start blogging again, and this is making me consider stopping.
Much to the Kremlin’s dismay, however, the Trump administration has vacillated.
Proving Trump isn't in charge of this government and is nothing more than a Deep State stooge.
Trump repeatedly promises improved ties with Moscow, but senior officials in his own administration and congressional leaders from both parties continue to threaten new sanctions and other chastisements.
The Kremlin’s standard response since the Crimea annexation has been to rally Russians around the flag, depicting the country as a besieged fortress. After four years, however, ordinary Russians find that formula tiresome, analysts said, and Putin’s declining popularity can be attributed partly to his inability to mend fences with the West.
You know what I'm tired of?
I'm sorry, did you say a hypocritical and projecting war pre$$?
“People are saying, ‘Please maintain Russia as a great power, but not at the expense of our income,’ ” said Lev D. Gudkov, director of the Levada Center, an independent polling organization. “When they started to sense that Putin’s foreign policy became too expensive, the attitude began to change.”
Fortunately, Trump doesn't have that problem in a country and pre$$ steeped in militari$m!
Initially, it seemed that the Helsinki talks opened the door to Russian-US cooperation on issues such as the wars in Syria and Ukraine, global terrorism, and nuclear proliferation.
Instead, Trump’s cozy attitude toward Putin backfired at home and the confrontation deepened.
First, the United States arrested a Russian citizen, Maria Butina, on charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent.
Whatever happened to her anyway?
Just disappeared, huh?
Then a bipartisan group of senators, dismayed that Trump had not publicly confronted Putin over Russia’s election meddling, drafted bill that would limit the operations in the United States of Russian state-owned banks and that would impede their use of the dollar.
That is why the ruble dropped, right?
As long as the U.S. military coerces countries to use the dollar as a reserve currency, they have that power. They day they lose reserve status, they and the people of America will become Zimbabwe.
On Wednesday, the State Department said it would impose new sanctions by the end of August in response to the attempted assassination in March of a former Russian spy living in England and his daughter.
Related:
"Police in Manchester, England, were investigating a shooting in the Moss Side area of the city that injured at least 10 people early Sunday as an attempted murder, and officers were working on the premise that a shotgun had been used, an official said. The shooting unfolded in the predawn hours, shortly after revelers attended the first day of an annual Caribbean carnival in the area....."
Damn Russians gotta ruin everything!
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"After Trump’s diplomatic waves, Merkel plans talks with Putin" by Melissa Eddy New York Times August 14, 2018
BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany will host President Vladimir Putin of Russia for talks near Berlin this weekend, a surprise move that analysts said shows how foes and allies of the United States alike are shifting in response to the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs and unpredictable diplomacy.
The chancellor and the Russian president will meet Saturday at the German government’s version of Camp David, Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told reporters Monday.
Just like Molotov and Ribbentrop!!
He said the talks were expected to focus on the situation in Syria, violence in eastern Ukraine, and a joint pipeline for natural gas, but analysts said that beyond the detailed points of the meeting might be an attempt to strengthen alliances and exchange ideas about how best to respond to President Trump’s tariffs.
Both Russia and Germany have been hit by tariffs on aluminum and steel, and both fear the ripple effects of Trump’s recent measures against Turkey.
The German and Russian leaders last met in May, when Putin welcomed Merkel to his residence in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi.
“I would view this meeting in a wider, global context,” said Stefan Meister, director of programs on Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. “I don’t see this as a signal of warming relations between Berlin and Moscow, but they share common points of interest where they are increasingly willing to cooperate.”
At the top of that list would be the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which would carry natural gas directly to Germany from Russia via the Baltic Sea, circumventing Ukraine and Poland.
Yeah, freezing this winter won't win Merkel any elections -- although it looks like she won't be winning anyway.
The United States has always opposed the idea, and before the opening of a NATO summit last month Trump used it as the basis of a blistering rhetorical attack on Germany, which he said was “captive to Russia.”
Berlin maintains economic sanctions against Russia in response to its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, but they are bound by a long history of economic and other ties, as well as the legacy of several bitter wars and of Russia’s Cold War domination of the former East Germany.
Germany is home to about 3 million “Russian-Germans,” entitled to claim citizenship by blood as the descendants of Germans who emigrated to Russia centuries ago.
And during Hitler's time.
Merkel and Putin, too, have a long, if sometimes troubled, history, stretching back before she took office in 2005. She speaks fluent Russian, he fluent German, and although she has a reputation both for reserve on the international stage and for coolly resisting authoritarian leaders, the two have spoken regularly on the phone, despite the Crimea crisis of 2014 and Russia’s escalation of an armed conflict in eastern Ukraine the following year.
Then they should have no problems understanding each other.
Weeks after Trump’s verbal attack on the pipeline at the NATO meeting, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia flew to Berlin to meet with Merkel and her foreign minister, Heiko Maas. General Valery V. Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff, also took part in the discussions, which focused on the situation in Syria.
Merkel continues to be haunted politically by fallout from her 2015 response to Syria’s humanitarian crisis, allowing hundreds of thousands of migrants into Germany, though the number of Syrians seeking asylum in Germany has dropped since then.
A deal that would allow some of those Syrian refugees to return home could shore up her position. Moscow has supported Syria.
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"Russia and 4 other nations sign accord to settle dispute on Caspian Sea" New York Times August 12, 2018
MOSCOW — The five countries with shorelines on the Caspian Sea agreed Sunday to a formula for dividing the world’s largest inland body of water and its potentially vast oil and gas resources.
The leaders of Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, which the Kremlin said “reflected a balance of interests” of the seashore nations.
Landlocked and less salty than the ocean, the Caspian Sea was regarded by Iran and the Soviet Union — until the Soviet collapse — as a lake, with a border neatly dividing the two countries’ territories, but when new seaside nations emerged, they sought either their own zones of Caspian territory or a new approach to governing the sea that would classify it, as international water with territorial zones and neutral areas, though it has no outlet to the world’s oceans.
The pact signed at a summit in Kazakhstan on Sunday takes both approaches in a compromise treating the surface as international water and dividing the seabed into territorial zones.
Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, told reporters, however, that dividing the seabed and its mineral wealth would require additional agreements.
Russia, the sea’s main naval power, had opposed splitting the Caspian into national territories that would have confined its own navy to a northwestern corner.
The country has launched missiles from its Caspian Sea fleet to strike targets in Syria, flies over the sea to reach Syria, and analysts say, never had the intention of surrendering its military dominance.
They just did, NYT.
The agreement says no country without Caspian shoreline can deploy military vessels in the sea.
In addition, Russia has for much of the post-Soviet period objected to east-west energy trade through subsea pipelines, hoping to keep in place the north-south trade routes of the Soviet Union’s rail and pipeline system.
Oil companies in the 1990s first proposed trans-Caspian pipelines to bring landlocked Central Asia’s energy to market, but that dropped off their agenda as the sea’s legal status was bogged down in talks for decades.
Sunday’s agreement potentially opens the sea for underwater oil and natural gas pipelines, which Russia had opposed, ostensibly on environmental grounds, though it has built such pipes in the Black and Baltic seas.
Only nations whose seabed territories are crossed by the pipelines would have to agree to lay the new pipelines, the convention says, though all five states could have a say on environmental protections.
A proposed trans-Caspian oil pipeline could ease exports from the Kashagan oil field in Kazakhstan, which is managed by Exxon.
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Looks like Iran and Russia just drew closer together.
Now about that other Asian power:
"Don’t bet on the US dollar rally ending any time soon, says the world’s largest publicly traded hedge fund. Investment titans like State Street Corp. and Morgan Stanley wager the greenback’s rally this year is just about finished, but Man Group PLC reckons it may have further to go. The escalating US-China trade war may fuel the dollar’s strength, not stymie it, according to Guillermo Osses, head of emerging markets debt strategies at Man Group GLG, a unit of the fund. “From a longer term perspective, the US is potentially on track to impose a meaningful amount of tariffs on China, which may have a transmission to all those countries that sell into China, including Europe,” Osses said. “On a trade-weighted basis you may continue to see dollar appreciation, especially relative to the euro.” The US currency will strengthen especially if the euro, which makes up about two-thirds of the dollar index, weakens because of any potential slowdown in Chinese demand for European products amid the trade war, Osses said. His view clashes with a growing chorus of financial giants that argue the greenback is nearing its peak as the factors that fueled its stellar run are being exhausted. They say US growth is waning just when other central banks are shuffling closer to winding back ultra-loose monetary policy. The greenback’s resurgence — helped by rising US interest rates and Treasury yields — has prompted President Trump to jawbone the currency in an effort to cool its advance."
See: When Qin the Chinaman Gets Here
He's a message of hope in a time of change.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
"Trump bemoans how Saudis considered ‘guilty until proven innocent’ in writer’s disappearance" by Ben Hubbard and Daniel Victor New York Times October 16, 2018
BEIRUT — President Trump said on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince had again denied any knowledge of the fate of a Saudi dissident journalist, but would expand an investigation into his disappearance and suspected killing two weeks ago.
“Answers will be forthcoming shortly,” Trump said on Twitter, relaying that he had spoken with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on a phone call that also included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is meeting with the kingdom’s rulers in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
Bin Salman, Trump said, “totally denied any knowledge of what took place in their Turkish Consulate.”
The prince “has already started, and will rapidly expand, a full and complete investigation into this matter,” the president said.
The translation from Arabic means a cover story is being concocted.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Trump Tuesday criticized rapidly mounting global condemnation of Saudi Arabia over the case, warning of a rush to judgment.
Trump compared the situation to the allegations of sexual assault leveled against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.
Please tell me he did not go there!
Whatever Brett Kavanaugh did, I do take it on faith that he didn't chop up a political enemy into little pieces. Maybe he did, and like the other cases, they couldn't find anything, but if not, well, he owes Kavanaugh an apology for dragging his name up regarding the Saudi butcher.
‘‘I think we have to find out what happened first,’’ he said. ‘‘Here we go again with, you know, you’re guilty until proven innocent. I don’t like that. We just went through that with Justice Kavanaugh and he was innocent all the way as far as I’m concerned.’’
Of course, when he is hurling accusations at Iran it is an entirely different thing.
Trump spoke Tuesday with bin Salman and Monday with King Salman. He said both deny any knowledge of what happened to Jamal Khashoggi, who entered their country’s consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago and hasn’t been seen since.
In Turkey earlier Tuesday, a high-level Turkish official told the Associated Press that police investigators searching the Saudi Consulate had found evidence that Khashoggi was killed there.
The president said that his own comment Monday about possible ‘‘rogue killers’’ behind Khashoggi’s disappearance was informed by his ‘‘feeling’’ from his conversation with Salman, and that the king did not use the term.
Yeah, we will get to them in the article after this one.
Also Tuesday, Pompeo met with the king and crown prince in Riyadh and said later the kingdom had made a ‘‘serious commitment’’ to hold senior leaders and officials accountable if implicated in Khashoggi’s death.
This is turning into a vomit-inducing joke.
In the meantime, international leaders and business executives are severing or rethinking ties to the Saudi government after Khashoggi’s disappearance. Trump has resisted any action, pointing to huge US weapons deals pending with Saudi Arabia and saying that sanctions could hurt end up hurting the American economy.
That is such an awful reason to cite when he's throwing up tariffs and sanctions all over the place, and I'll bet Israel stands by them.
He said it was too early to say whether he endorsed other countries’ actions. ‘‘I have to find out what happened,’’ he said, but his complaint about ‘‘guilty until proven innocent’’ and comparison to the Kavanaugh situation suggested he was giving the Saudis more leeway than other US allies.
Trump said Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s trip to attend a Saudi investment conference is still on, but that it could be canceled by Friday depending on what the investigation finds.
Pompeo met with King Salman, the crown prince, and other top officials in Riyadh to discuss the disappearance of Khashoggi, who Turkish officials say was killed and dismembered after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Pompeo is expected to travel to Ankara, the Turkish capital, on Wednesday.
Khashoggi, who wrote columns for The Washington Post, lived in the United States, and his 60th birthday was on Saturday. His disappearance has heightened tension between Saudi Arabia and both Turkey and the United States.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told reporters in Ankara on Tuesday that investigators who searched the consulate on Monday and Tuesday were looking into “toxic materials, and those materials being removed by painting them over.”
Turkish news outlets, citing unnamed sources, have reported that Khashoggi was drugged, and that parts of the consulate and the nearby consul’s residence were repainted after the journalist’s disappearance.
The reported killing has created a bipartisan uproar in Congress, shaking the foundations of the close US-Saudi relationship with calls for suspension of military sales punctuated by particularly strong rebukes of Mohammed bin Salman.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, formerly a strong advocate of Saudi Arabia, has been among the most outspoken critics of the crown prince over the Khashoggi mystery, even before more facts are known.
There the NYT goes again, excusing the barbaric Saudis while casting aspersions at their critics -- as the New York Times is going to go with the new explanation, whatever its truth.
“He had this guy murdered in the consulate in Turkey,” Graham said Tuesday on the “Fox and Friends” news program. “Expect me to ignore it? I feel used and abused.”
So do we all.
For two weeks, Saudi leaders, including both the king and the crown prince, have denied that their country had anything to do with Khashoggi’s disappearance and have said that they did not know where he was. Saudi officials have insisted that he left the consulate, safe and free, the same day he entered it, although they have offered no supporting evidence, but by Monday night, it appeared that the Trump administration and Turkey’s leaders were leaving room for a new version of events: Trump said after speaking with King Salman that perhaps “rogue killers” had been involved, and the Turkish authorities stopped leaking details of the investigation, which had previously appeared daily on the covers of Turkish newspapers.
Oh, no.
So ONCE AGAIN, TRUTH gets LOST amid the FALSE REALITY of CONVENTIONAL WISDOM and GEOPOLITICAL POLITICS.
Everything you have been told and taught has been a lie, dear fellow citizen of the world. It's an illusionary image and myth.
At their meeting on Tuesday, Pompeo “thanked the king for his commitment to supporting a thorough, transparent and timely investigation of Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance,” said Heather Nauert, a State Department spokeswoman.
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I hate to say it, but MbS looks like an evil back-stabber and ruthless shit who wouldn't give two cents before cutting your head off. Pompeo is lucky he's facing him.
Now, about those "rogue killers":
"Suspects Had Ties to Saudi Crown Prince" by David D. Kirkpatrick, Malachy Browne, Ben Hubbard and David Botti, Oct. 16, 2018
ISTANBUL — One of the suspects identified by Turkey in the disappearance of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi was a frequent companion of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — seen disembarking from airplanes with him in Paris and Madrid and photographed standing guard during his visits this year to Houston, Boston and the United Nations.
Was in Bo$ton, was he?
Three others are linked by witnesses and other records to the Saudi crown prince’s security detail.
A fifth is a forensic doctor who holds senior positions in the Saudi Interior Ministry and medical establishment, a figure of such stature that he could be directed only by a high-ranking Saudi authority.
If, as the Turkish authorities say, these men were present at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul where Mr. Khashoggi disappeared on Oct. 2, they might provide a direct link between what happened and Prince Mohammed. That would undercut any suggestion that Mr. Khashoggi died in a rogue operation unsanctioned by the crown prince. Their connection to him could also make it more difficult for the White House and Congress to accept such an explanation.
I suspect the media will just drop it then.
How much blame for Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance or death settles on the 33-year-old crown prince has become a decisive factor in his standing in the eyes of the West and within the royal family.
The prince has presented himself as a reformer intent on opening up the kingdom’s economy and culture, and has used that image to try to influence White House policy in the region and to woo Western investors to help diversify the Saudi economy, but the international revulsion at the reported assassination and mutilation of a single newspaper columnist — Mr. Khashoggi, who wrote for The Washington Post — has already sullied that image far more than previous missteps by the crown prince, from miring his country in a catastrophic war in Yemen to kidnapping the prime minister of Lebanon.
OMG, they finally mentioned Yemen and I had forgotten about the abduction of the prime minister of Lebanon.
The crown prince and his father, King Salman, have denied any knowledge of Mr. Khashoggi’s whereabouts, repeatedly asserting that he left the consulate freely. Saudi officials did not respond to requests for comment for this article, but in the last few days, as major American businesses have withdrawn from a marquee investment conference in Riyadh and members of Congress have stepped up called for sanctions, the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia appear to have been searching for a face-saving way out.
I don't know if there is anyone out there who finds this as grotesque as I do, but think about that.
The scum psychopaths running these countries are searching for a face-saving way out.
Forget truth, justice, and all that crap we are fed ad infinitum; ask yourself if Mr. Khashoggi's face was saved, or was it just chopped off?
The royal court was expected to acknowledge that Mr. Khashoggi was killed in the consulate, and to blame an intelligence agent for botching an operation to interrogate Mr. Khashoggi that ended up killing him.
How do they say fall guy or scapegoat in Arabic?
Good God!
President Trump floated the possibility on Monday that Mr. Khashoggi was the victim of “rogue killers,” but such explanations would run up against a host of hard-to-explain obstacles.
Don't worry, after this week the ma$$ media ion this country will be on to a different story and this will all soon be forgotten -- like Kavanaugh.
Whadda ya' mean WHO?!!!!!
The suspects’ positions in the Saudi government and their links to the crown prince could make it more difficult to absolve him of responsibility.
But they will do it anyway, because the truth is much more terrible.
The presence of a forensic doctor who specializes in autopsies suggests the operation may have had a lethal intent from the start.
For me it was the bone saw.
Turkish officials have said they possess evidence that the 15 Saudi agents flew into Istanbul on Oct. 2, assassinated Mr. Khashoggi, dismembered his body with a bone saw they had brought for the purpose, and flew out the same day. Records show that two private jets chartered by a Saudi company with close ties to the Saudi crown prince and Interior Ministry arrived and left Istanbul on the day of Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance.
Like when the bin Laden skedaddled after 9/11!
Turkish officials said Mr. Khashoggi was killed within two hours of his arrival at the consulate. That timeline would not have allowed much time for an interrogation to go awry.
The Times gathered more information about the suspects using facial recognition, publicly available records, social media profiles, a database of Saudi cellphone numbers, Saudi news reports, leaked Saudi government documents and in some cases the accounts of witnesses in Saudi Arabia and countries the crown prince has visited.
The New York Times has confirmed independently that at least nine of 15 suspects identified by Turkish authorities worked for the Saudi security services, military or other government ministries.
One of them, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, was a diplomat assigned to the Saudi Embassy in London in 2007, according to a British diplomatic roster. He traveled extensively with the crown prince, perhaps as a bodyguard.
Mr. Mutreb, the former diplomat in London, was photographed emerging from airplanes with Prince Mohammed on recent trips to Madrid and Paris. He was also photographed in Houston, Boston and the United Nations during the crown prince’s visits there, often glowering as he surveyed a crowd.
A French professional who has worked with the Saudi royal family identified a second suspect, Abdulaziz Mohammed al-Hawsawi, as a member of the security team that travels with the crown prince.
A Saudi news outlet reported that someone with the same name as a third suspect, Thaar Ghaleb al-Harbi, was promoted last year to the rank of lieutenant in the Saudi royal guard for bravery in the defense of Prince Mohammed’s palace in Jeddah.
A fourth suspect traveled with a passport bearing the name of another member of the royal guard, Muhammed Saad Alzahrani. A search of the name in Menom3ay, an app popular in Saudi Arabia that allows users to see the names other users have associated with certain phone numbers, identified him as a member of the royal guard. A guard wearing a name tag with that name appears in a video from 2017 standing next to Prince Mohammed.
Members of the royal guard or aides who traveled with the crown prince may not report directly to him and may sometimes take on other duties. It is possible that some could have been recruited for an expedition to capture or interrogate Mr. Khashoggi, perhaps led by a senior intelligence official, but the presence among the suspects of an autopsy expert, Dr. Salah al-Tubaigy, suggests that killing might have been part of the original plan.
Dr. Tubaigy, who maintained a presence on several social media platforms, identified himself on his Twitter account as the head of the Saudi Scientific Council of Forensics and held lofty positions in the kingdom’s premier medical school as well as in its Interior Ministry. He studied at the University of Glasgow and in 2015 he spent three months in Australia as a visiting forensic pathologist at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. His published writings include works on dissection and mobile autopsies.
Related: Australian leader considers moving embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv
It's always good to know which governments around the world are under Zionist thumb.
Although there is no public record of a relationship between him and the royal court, such a senior figure in the Saudi medical establishment was unlikely to join a rogue expedition organized by an underling. Dr. Tubaigy, whose name first appeared among reports of the suspects several days ago, has not publicly addressed the allegations. None of the suspects could be reached for comment.
And I will bet Turkey won't be asking for extraditions, either.
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The Globe says it is all about moral leadership, and that Saudi Arabia is playing a dangerous game.
Also see: Khashoggi Picked the Wrong Prince
Related(?):
"China breaks silence on Muslim detention camps, calling them ‘humane’" by Chris Buckley New York Times October 16, 2018
BEIJING — Under mounting international criticism, China has given its most extensive defense yet of its sweeping campaign to detain and indoctrinate Muslims, with a senior official on Tuesday describing its network of camps in the far west as humane job-training centers.
Rights groups, American lawmakers, and a United Nations panel have assailed the “transformation through education” camps holding Uighurs and members of other Muslim minority groups in China’s far northwestern Xinjiang region. Hundreds of thousands have been held in the camps — one estimate says 1 million — and former inmates who have fled abroad have described them as virtual prisons that engage in harsh brainwashing, but the chairman of Xinjiang’s government, Shohrat Zakir, himself an ethnic Uighur, called the camps a “humane” and lawful shield against terrorism in an interview published by China’s official Xinhua news agency. He said the facilities gave Uighurs and other Muslims courses in the Chinese language and taught them to be law-abiding citizens. They also receive training in job skills such as making clothes, e-commerce, hairdressing, and cosmetology, Zakir said.
Zakir said that “students” in the facilities were provided with free meals, air-conditioned dormitories, movie screenings, and access to computer rooms.
That's better than in Cedar Junction.
“Xinjiang has launched a vocational education and training program according to the law,” Zakir said. “Its purpose is to get rid of the environment and soil that breeds terrorism and religious extremism.”
It's called prison labor over here.
Zakir did not say how many Muslims had been sent to the camps, but he appeared to acknowledge for the first time that people were being held against their will in the facilities.
He said that the program dealt with people suspected of wrongdoing that fell short of requiring criminal convictions, and that they received “graduation certificates” only after signing agreements and meeting certain criteria. Some detainees, he said, were being prepared for release and assignment to jobs at the end of 2018.
It's like diversionary treatment program and boot camp.
Zakir suggested the campaign would continue for many years. The “deradicalization” program is showing results, he said, “but the duration, complexity and intensity remain acute, and we must maintain high vigilance.”
Omurbek Eli, a businessman who has described his time held in a camp in 2017, scoffed at Zakir’s description of the indoctrination centers as “colorful” places where students play basketball, watch movies and join in singing contests. His experience, he said, was far harsher.
“They’re full of nonsense,” Eli, who is originally from Xinjiang and obtained Kazakh citizenship, said by telephone. “They say that these camps are to eradicate terrorism, but inside I saw lawyers, doctors, intellectuals, even officials who had nothing to do with extremism,” he said. “They call these vocational training centers, but it was really a prison.”
He has since been released.
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So that's where his journey ended?
Maybe Trump can send Jim Mattis to rescue him.
