“He
didn’t talk much before he went inside the Saudi Consulate in Turkey to get our
marriage proposal. Little did I know, it was the last time I could actually see
him before he disappeared and probably murdered,” said Hatice Cengiz[1], Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancée
when she was being interviewed by CNN.
The
first step towards their big day turned into a tragedy she could never forget.
Khashoggi however told her not to worry and wait outside because everything is
going to be alright as he walked in. He went in at 1pm and haven’t stepped
outside even after 3 hours inside. Hatice, who waited since 1pm, started to
feel curious about what happened to her fiancé.
“When
the clock hit 4 o’clock, I became worried and I went inside to ask about
Khasoggi but shockingly, the security said Khashoggi had left the consulate
already,“ she added. As someone who waited outside the consulate in front of
their main entrance, Hatice can confirm that someone is hiding something
because she did not see her fiancé walking out of that building at all.
Since
that day, Hatice has never got to see Khashoggi again. He disappeared into the
wind.[2] Rumors has it that the
Saudi Crown Prince[3]
ordered the Saudi Intelligence to kill Khashoggi. As someone who just wanted
Khashoggi to come back, Hatice choose to let the authorities do their
investigations and he said she doesn’t want to speak about it to anyone anymore
because it hurts every time she tried to explain her last tragedy.
Who
was this Jamal Khashoggi? If the rumors are true, was he so important that
people wanted him dead? He was a 59 year-old journalist, dissident, author, and
a general manager and editor-in-chief of Al-Arab News Channel from Saudi
Arabia. Those positions meant nothing to Hatice because she was in love in his
brain. According to Hatice, Khashoggi was too humble and friendly for someone
with so much knowledge and he loved to share every single one of it.
Jamal Khashoggi was not just
an ordinary person. If you look back in time in 1930, Saudi Arabia was founded
by King Abdul Aziz who had a personal physician with him all the time. That
doctor was actually Jamal’s late grandfather. Khashoggi’s uncle, Adnan
Khashoggi, a celebrity billionaire and the weapons broker for another Saudi
monarch, King Fahd. Adnan is a high-profile Saudi Arabian arms dealer. According
to a Saudi dissident who runs the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, Ali
al-Ahmed, Khashoggi was definitely born in a very rich and educated family. He
knew Khashoggi for many years and saw him until recently as more a loyalist
than a critic of the royal family.
In
his early years of doing journalism, Khashoggi once interviewed al-Qaida leader
Osama bin Laden.[4]
During that time, Bin Laden was fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan and
still tolerated by the Saudi establishment.
His
glorious career started when he was appointed as a correspondent for the leading
English-language daily newspaper published in Jeddah, called Saudi Gazette and
also as an assistant manager for Saudi Gazette sister publication, Okaz from
1985 to 1987. In 1987 to 1990, He became a journalist for various Arab
newspapers. Khashoggi’s life as a journalist was starting to get better when he
became managing editor and acting editor-in-chief of Al Madina in 1991. Al
Madina is one of the oldest newspapers in Saudi Arabia and he held that position until
1999.
His
experience in reporting has brought him to the eye of the world. In fact, he
was once a foreign correspondent in such countries as Afghanistan, Algeria,
Kuwait, Sudan, and in the Middle East and his charisma somehow has made him an
ally to Saudi Arabia and United States. During
1991, He served with both Saudi Arabian Intelligence Agency and possibly the
United States in Afghanistan. Eight years later, he was appointed a deputy
editor-in-chief of Arab News, and served in the post until 2003.
He moved to Washington in
2005 to work at the Saudi Embassy as a key adviser to the ambassador. Khaled
Saffuri, an Arab-American activist in Washington who knew Khashoggi for 25
years said that Jamal had a very close relationship with the royal family in
Saudi Arabia[5].
Just because he was close to the royal family, that didn’t mean he got the
immunity. Did you know he was fired twice as a newspaper editor for coverage
that offended the royal family? “He was an independent mind, he thought his own
way” Said Khaled.
A complex man of
contradictions, journalist Jamal Khashoggi went from being a Saudi royal family
insider to an outspoken critic of the government. In 2015, Jamal Khashoggi was
awarded with his first and probably his biggest project of his life, leading a
TV station. Khashoggi was named head of a new television station in neighboring
Bahrain, called Al Arab. On his first day of working, Khashoggi didn’t hold
back by aired an interview with a prominent government critic[6]. In just 6 hours, his
station was shut.
Up until this point,
Khashoggi was the most famous journalist in Saudi Arabia. He was on Saudi TV
every day for years. Years after
criticizing the Saudi Arabian government, Jamal was banned on twitter in Saudi
Arabia and he left Saudi and went to United States and began writing for The
Washington Post is 2017. In his column, Khashoggi perhaps presciently pleaded
for greater freedom of expression in the Middle East. “The Arab world is facing
its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through
domestic forces vying for power,” he wrote.
“The
Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens
can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a
platform for Arab voices,” Khashoggi wrote.
Everything
started to look sunshine and rainbows for Khashoggi when he found the love of
his life. In order to marry Hatice Cengiz, his fiancée, Khashoggi needed to get
the paperwork of his marriage proposal from Saudi Arabia. Under the strain of
his voluntary exile from Saudi Arabia, his marriage had ended in a divorce, and
he had since become engaged to a Turkish woman. Khashoggi needed certification
from the Saudi authorities of his divorce so that he could remarry in Turkey
and the wedding was planned for the next day. Khashoggi thought it was safer to
pick up the documents at Saudi Consulate in Turkey rather than going back home.
October
2nd was where things went south for Jamal. He went to Saudi
Consulate in Istanbul with the woman he was supposed to marry. While his
fiancée waited outside, Khashoggi walked straight into the consulate without
saying anything to her. Little did she know, that was the last time she got to
see him in flesh. On this day, Jamal Khashoggi had disappeared. His fiancée
waited 3 hours outside the consulate but he never walked out of that building.
All these years of calling
out Saudi Arabian government has its toll on Khashoggi. His disappearance has
been shrouded in mystery, and triggered an international crisis for both Riyadh
and Washington as Turkish officials accused Saudi Arabia of a state-sponsored
killing. The Saudi authorities have admitted he was killed inside the building
on the orders of rogue intelligence officers. But many in the international
community believe he was killed on the orders of the Saudi Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, of whom he had been critical.
The
day Mr. Khashoggi disappeared, 15 Saudi agents flew into Istanbul on two
private jets chartered by a company with close ties to the crown prince and the
Saudi Interior Ministry, the Turks say. The agents waited for Mr. Khashoggi
inside the consulate and killed him within two hours of his arrival, the
Turkish officials contend.
Prince Mohammed and other
Saudi officials have denied any knowledge of Mr. Khashoggi’s whereabouts.
Without giving any evidence, they claimed that Khashoggi left the consulate
freely. The Saudi crown prince even got supports from President Trump and his
administrations despite a CIA assessment that he ordered the killing of
journalist Jamal Khashoggi and pleas from U.S. senators for Trump to condemn
the kingdom's de facto ruler.
A
research specialist from Center Of Political And Economic Diplomacy, Dr.
Wirdawati Abdul Rahim[7] said that she the reason
why Trump stood behind the Saudi crown prince is because Saudi Arabia possesses
about 18% of the world's proven oil reserves and is the world's biggest oil
exporter and U.S. imports more than a million barrel of Saudi oil a day.
“Saudi Arabia invested in U.S. bond and
securities by spending over $100 billion on American weapons and in exchange,
The United States would politically and militarily supports Saudi Arabia,” she
added. She claimed that if Trump cuts all ties with Saudi Arabia based on what
happened to Khashoggi, it would bring a disaster on their economy.
Meanwhile,
a senior journalist who used to work in covering foreign news for Bernama,
Zulkafly Borhan[8],
66, said that Saudi Arabia is a famous place that always do injustice towards
media and journalists because of their journalists are either captured or dead.
“I
am not surprised if the Saudi Crown Prince is involved in this matter because
when you have absolute power you can wipe anyone out of existence without
getting caught because you control the whole thing in the country,” he added.
Somehow,
the world still acknowledge that journalism is not a profesion because there
are no qualification letters after our names. But have you ever wondered why
Superman, the strongest comic book superhero works as a journalist? Because
being a journalist is a dangerous job and if a journalist died while doing the
journalism work, that journalist will be considered as superhero as well. As a
journalist, you’ll face a lot of obstacles in order to obtain information
especially in investigative reporting and it could take your life away too if
you exposed the wrong people.
Three
months after Khashoggi’s disappearance, he was named as Time Magazine’s Person
of The Year[9].
Person of the Year is an annual issue of the United States news magazine Time
that features and profiles a person, a group, an idea, or an object that has
done the most to influence the events of the year. It shows that Khashoggi’s
death has gained attentions from so many people who want justice to be served.
As
for now, this is still an on-going investigation. Hatice wished to see everyone
who’s responsible in this matter to be held accountable. Let’s hope who killed
Khashoggi will be brought to justice as soon as possible because the culture of
killing media staff or journalists need to be stopped.
[1] Hatice
Cengiz, Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancée. Interviewed by CNN on Oct 30, 2018
[2] Jamal
Khashoggi: All you need to know about Saudi journalist's death: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45812399
[3] Mohammed
bin Salman, The Saudi Crown Prince who rumored to be the one who killed
Khashoggi: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/jamal-khashoggi-case-latest-updates-181010133542286.html
[4]
Khashoggi’s relationship with Osama Bin Laden: https://www.businessinsider.my/missing-saudi-journalist-jamal-khashoggi-ties-to-osama-bin-laden-islamists-2018-10/?r=US&IR=T
[5] Jamal
Khashoggi's Complicated History With The Saudi Royal Family: https://www.npr.org/2018/10/19/658947600/jamal-khashoggis-complicated-history-with-the-saudi-royal-family
[6] Saudi
Al-Arab TV channel halts hours after launch: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31090848
[7] .
Dr. Wirdawati Abdul Rahim, research specialist from Center of Political and
Economic Diplomacy, interviewed on November 11, 2018.
[8]
Zulkafly Borhan, Former Journalist for
Bernama. Interviewed on November 14, 2018.
[9] Time
Person of the Year 2018: Jamal Khashoggi and other journalists win magazine’s
annual award on 11 December, 2018: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-guardians-time-person-of-the-year-2018-jamal-khashoggi-winner-murder-saudi-arabia-turkey-embassy-a8677546.html
poor journalist
ReplyDeletethey work under the line of fire every day
Delete