Jamal Khashoggi: So Many Questions Remain

[Content Note: Murder; descriptions of violence at link.]

The editorial board of the Washington Post published an important editorial late yesterday, to keep focus on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi as the perpetrators certainly hope that they will escape accountability as public attention wanes: "Jamal Khashoggi Was Brutally Murdered Four Weeks Ago; We're Still Waiting for Answers."

Jamal Khashoggi walked in to the Saudi Consulate four weeks ago on Tuesday to obtain a simple document allowing him to marry. Instead, he was brutally murdered by a team of 15 agents sent from Riyadh. Saudi authorities now acknowledge the crime was premeditated. Yet much about it remains undisclosed, including what happened to Mr. Khashoggi's body, which has not been returned to his family.

Rather than answer those questions, the Saudi government — and its de facto accomplices in the Trump administration — have gone silent, evidently hoping that demands for accountability will fade away now that the story has been pushed from the front pages. That should not be allowed to happen.

The editors rightly note that the Saudi government knows what happened to Khashoggi and are avoiding disclosing that information with the insulting ruse of pretending to investigate what happened.

The Saudis are deflecting questions by pretending to investigate what happened; the kingdom's chief prosecutor traveled to Istanbul on Monday to meet his Turkish counterpart. Worse, rather than demand a genuinely independent investigation, the Trump administration is playing along. It has withheld its own conclusions about the murder while pretending to believe that the Saudis can conduct a credible probe — even though a chief suspect is the kingdom's own autocratic ruler.

We need to keep making noise, even though there is little hope that the Republican Congressional majority will do as they should and demand answers of this administration and devise adequate punitive measures against Saudi Arabia.

We need to keep saying loudly that we want to know what happened to Jamal Khashoggi and want justice for his family, even if it feels futile.

To quote dear Maud: "There are times when you must speak, not because you are going to change the other person, but because if you don't speak, they have changed you."