Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi (/kəˈʃɒɡi/;[4] Arabic: جمال
خاشقجي Jamāl Khāshugji, Hejazi
pronunciation: [d͡ʒaˈmaːl xaːˈʃʊɡd͡ʒi];[5]13 October 1958 – 2 October 2018) was a
Saudi Arabian journalist,[6] author, and a former general
manager and editor-in-chief of Al-Arab News Channel.[7] He also served as editor for the
Saudi Arabian newspaper Al Watan,
turning it into a platform for Saudi Arabian progressives.[8]
Khashoggi fled Saudi Arabia in September 2017
and went into self-imposed exile. He said that the Saudi
Arabian government had "banned him from Twitter,"[9] and he later wrote newspaper
articles critical of the Saudi government. Khashoggi had been sharply critical
of Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman,
and the country's king, Salman of Saudi Arabia.[6] He also opposed the Saudi
Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.[10]
Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian
consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018, but did not leave the
building. Amid news reports claiming that he had been killed and dismembered inside, an inspection of the
consulate, by Saudi Arabian and Turkish officials, took place on 15 October.
Initially the Saudi Arabian government denied the death, claiming Khashoggi had
left the consulate alive, but on 20 October admitted that Khashoggi had died inside
the consulate, claiming he had been strangled to death after a fight had broken
out.[11]
Jamal Khashoggi was born in Medina on 13 October 1958.[1][7][12] His grandfather, Muhammad Khashoggi,
who was of Turkish origin
(Kaşıkçı), married a Saudi Arabian woman and was personal physician to
King Abdulaziz Al Saud,
the founder of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.[13]
Jamal Khashoggi was the nephew of the
high-profile Saudi Arabian arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, known for his part in the Iran–Contra scandal,[14][15] who was estimated to have had a
net worth of US$4 billion in the early 1980s.[16][17]Adnan Khashoggi had claimed that their
family grandfather was of Jewish descent.[18] Jamal Khashoggi was also a first cousin of Dodi Fayed, who was dating Diana, Princess of
Wales, when the two were
killed in a car crash in Paris.[19] He received his elementary and
secondary education in Saudi Arabia and obtained a bachelor's degree in
business administration from Indiana State
University in the United States in 1982.[7][20][21]
Career
Jamal Khashoggi began his career as a regional
manager for Tihama Bookstores from 1983 to 1984.[22] Later he worked as a correspondent
for the Saudi Gazette and
as an assistant manager for Okaz from 1985 to 1987.[22] He continued his career as a
reporter for various daily and weekly Arab newspapers from 1987 to 1990,
including Asharq Al-Awsat, Al Majalla and Al Muslimoon.[7][22] Khashoggi became managing editor
and acting editor-in-chief of Al Madina in
1991 and his tenure in that position lasted until 1999.[22] He has admitted that: "Yes, I
joined the Muslim Brotherhood organization when I was at university. And, I was
not alone. Some of the current ministers and deputies did but later every one
of us developed their own political tendencies and views." The Muslim
Brotherhood was outlawed in Egypt following the
overthrow of Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in a military coup on
3 July 2013.[23] He argued that "there can be
no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that
political Islam is a part of it."[24][25] According to The Spectator,
"Khashoggi and his fellow travellers believe in imposing Islamic rule by
engaging in the democratic process."[26] Khashoggi was critical of Salafism,[27] the ultra-conservative Sunni
movement.[24]
Khashoggi at a 2018 Project on
Middle East Democracy forum called "Mohammed bin
Salman's Saudi Arabia: A Deeper Look."
From 1991 to 1999, he was a foreign
correspondent in such countries as Afghanistan, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan,
and in the Middle East.[7] It is also claimed that he served
with both Saudi Arabian Intelligence
Agency and possibly the United States in Afghanistan during
this period.[28] He then was appointed a deputy
editor-in-chief of Arab News, and served
in the post from 1999 to 2003.[29]
Relationship
with Osama bin Laden
Khashoggi was acquainted with Osama bin Laden in the 1980s and 1990s in
Afghanistan while Bin Laden was championing his jihad against the
Soviets. Khashoggi interviewed bin Laden several times, usually
meeting bin Laden in Tora Bora, and once more
in Sudan in 1995.[30][31] During that period, he was
employed by Saudi Arabian intelligence agencies to try to influence bin Laden
into making a compromise with the Saudi royal family in their rivalry.[citation needed]
Al Arabiya reported that Khashoggi
once tried to persuade bin Laden to quit violence.[32] Khashoggi was the only non-royal
Saudi Arabian who knew of the royals' intimate dealing with al-Qaeda in the lead-up to the September 11 terrorist
attacks. He dissociated himself from bin Laden following the
attacks.[26]
Khashoggi wrote in response to the September 11
attacks: "The most pressing issue now is to ensure that our children can
never be influenced by extremist ideas like those 15 Saudis who were misled
into hijacking four planes that fine September day, piloting them, and us,
straight into the jaws of hell."[30]
Saudi
Arabia
Khashoggi briefly became the editor-in-chief of
the Saudi Arabian daily Al Watan in
2003.[7][33][34][29] After less than two months, he was
fired in May 2003 by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Information because
he had allowed a columnist to criticize the Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328), who is considered
the founding father of Wahhabism.[35] This incident led to Khashoggi's
reputation in the West as a liberal progressive.[26]
After he was fired, Khashoggi went to London in voluntary exile. There he became an
adviser to Prince Turki Al Faisal.[36] He then served as a media aide to
Al Faisal while the latter was Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States.[37] In April 2007, Khashoggi began to
work as editor-in-chief of Al Watan for a second time.[29]
A column by poet Ibrahim al-Almaee challenging
the basic Salafi premises was published in Al
Watan in May 2010 and led to Khashoggi's second departure, on 17 May
2010.[38] Al Watan announced
that Khashoggi resigned as editor-in-chief "to focus on his personal
projects". However, it is thought that he was forced out due to official
displeasure with articles critical of the Kingdom's harsh Islamic rules.[38] After his second resignation,
Khashoggi maintained ties with Saudi Arabian elites, including those in its
intelligence apparatus. In 2015, he launched the satellite news channel Al-Arab, based
in Bahrain outside Saudi Arabia, which does not
allow independent news channels to operate within its borders. The news channel
was backed by Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and
partnered with U.S. financial news channel Bloomberg Television.
However, it was on air for less than 11 hours before it was shut down by
Bahrain.[39][40] He was also a political
commentator for Saudi Arabian and international channels, including MBC, BBC, Al Jazeera, and Dubai TV.[22] Between June 2012 and September
2016, his opinion columns were regularly published by Al Arabiya.[41]
Citing a report from Middle East Eye, the Independent said in December 2016 that
Khashoggi had been banned by Saudi Arabian authorities from publishing or
appearing on television "for criticising U.S. President-elect Donald Trump".[42]
The
Washington Post
Khashoggi criticized the
arrest of women's rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul in
May 2018.
Khashoggi relocated to the United States in
June 2017[43] and began writing for The Washington Post in
September 2017.[44] In the Post, he
criticized the Saudi
Arabian-led blockade against Qatar, Saudi Arabia's dispute with
Lebanon,[45] Saudi Arabia's diplomatic
dispute with Canada, and the Kingdom's crackdown on dissent and
media.[46] Khashoggi supported some of Crown
Prince's reforms, like allowing women
to drive,[47] but he condemned Saudi Arabia's
arrest of Loujain al-Hathloul,
who was ranked third in the list of "Top 100 Most Powerful Arab Women
2015", Eman al-Nafjan, Aziza al-Yousef, and several other women's rights
advocates involved in the women to drive movement and
the anti
male-guardianship campaign.[45]
Speaking to the BBC's Newshour, Khashoggi criticized Israel's settlement building in
the occupied Palestinian territories,
saying: "There was no international pressure on the Israelis and therefore
the Israelis got away with building settlements, demolishing homes."[48]
Khashoggi criticized the Saudi
war on Yemen, writing "The longer this cruel war lasts in
Yemen, the more permanent the damage will be. The people of Yemen will be busy
fighting poverty, cholera and
water scarcity and rebuilding their country. The crown prince [Mohammed bin
Salman] must bring an end to the violence," and "Saudi Arabia's crown
prince must restore dignity to his country — by ending Yemen's cruel war."[49]
The New York Times reported
that Khashoggi was a victim of cyberbullying campaign before he was killed.
Saudi Arabia used an online army of Twitter trolls to harass Khashoggi and other
critics of the Saudi regime.[50]
According to The Spectator, "With almost two million Twitter followers, he was the most famous
political pundit in the Arab world and a regular guest on the major TV news
networks in Britain and the United States."[26] In 2018, Khashoggi established a
new political party called Democracy
for the Arab World Now, posing a political threat to Crown Prince Mohammed.[26] He wrote in a Post column
on 3 April 2018 that Saudi Arabia "should return to its pre-1979 climate,
when the government restricted hard-line Wahhabi traditions. Women today should
have the same rights as men. And all citizens should have the right to speak
their minds without fear of imprisonment."[45] In a posthumous (17 October 2018)
article, "What the Arab world needs most is free expression",
Khashoggi described the hopes of Arab world press freedom during the Arab Spring and his hope that an Arab world
free press independent from national governments would develop so that
"ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural
problems their societies face."[51]
Killing
Main article: Killing of Jamal
Khashoggi
Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian
consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 in order to obtain
documents related to his planned marriage. As no CCTV recorded
him exiting the consulate,[52] he was declared a missing person[53] amid news reports claiming that he
had been killed and dismembered inside the
consulate.[54][55]An inspection of the consulate, by both
Saudi Arabian and Turkish officials, took place on 15 October. Turkish
officials found evidence of "tampering" during the inspection and
evidence that supported the belief that Khashoggi had been killed.[56] Initially, the Saudi Arabian
government denied the death and claimed that Khashoggi had left the consulate
alive[57] but 18 days later admitted he had
died inside during a fistfight. Eighteen Saudis were arrested, including the
team of 15 who had been sent to "confront him".[11][58] There is concern that many Saudi
critics have gone missing in suspicious ways.[59] The US president and several
Republican US senators remain divided as to which, if any economic or other
sanctions should be applied to Saudi Arabia.[60]
Personal
life
At the time of his death, Khashoggi was
planning to marry Hatice Cengiz, a 36-year-old Ph.D. candidate at a university
in Istanbul. The two had met in May 2018, during a conference in the city.
Khashoggi, a Saudi national, visited the Saudi consulate on 2 October to get
paperwork that would allow him to marry Cengiz.[61]Khashoggi was married and divorced three
times. His first marriage was to Rawia al-Tunisi by whom he had two sons and
two daughters.[62]
No comments:
Post a Comment