Audio recording that reportedly proves Khashoggi was tortured before his murder has been given to US and Saudi Arabia, Turkey says

Source: Jamal Khashoggi: Trump says US asked for audio ‘if it exists’ | World news | The Guardian

According to an account in the pro-government daily newspaper Yeni Şafak, and a later report citing Turkish officials by the New York Times, the audio recording proves that Khashoggi was seized as soon as he entered the office of the Saudi consul, Mohammad al-Otaibi, on 2 October.

The dissident journalist was beaten and had his fingers cut off, according to the news account. Otaibi asked for the torture to be done outside his office, saying: “You will put me in trouble.”

“If you want to live when you come back to Arabia, shut up,” the consul was told by a Saudi hit team who had flown to Istanbul hours before Khashoggi’s planned visit to the consulate, where he had expected to pick up legal papers he needed to get married.

Khashoggi was beheaded and his body was cut up. A Saudi forensics specialist Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy can be heard putting on headphones to listen to music and telling others to do the same while the body was dismembered, according to the reports.

Investigators believe that after the killing, Khashoggi’s body was taken to the consul general’s house, where it was disposed of.

If you remove the mundane artifice of legal jurisdictions, Drumpf, Pompeo, and the Saudi royal family are all complicit in some or all of murder, covering up a murder, and interfering with a murder investigation.  They are all brutal criminals plain and simple.  They just haven’t yet been convicted, tried, or imprisoned.  Their pathetically puny musterings in life must surely pale in comparison to the courage of Jamal Khashoggi and those like him who speak truth to power despite these potential consequences.

I hope that this may serve to mark a turning point in the way legitimate journalists and other truth-seekers are regarded by society.  They are in some ways the only people standing between us and chaotic, ignorant oblivion, a dark reality crafted only by the hands of those sufficiently corrupt to have aspired to power.