I was about to enter the relaxing side of Thursday pushing towards Friday. It was to be an uneventful setting towards the weekend, yet there Al Jazeera comes with the setting of “UN special rapporteur tells Al Jazeera the Saudi trial over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi made a ‘mockery of justice’”, in my personal setting, the UN Essay writer has an issue, so lets recap the issue.
A lot of it was given in ‘Demanding Dismissal’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/07/04/demanding-dismissal/), I even added the report there. Yet one thing I left alone (until now), in the article I referred to “The Saudi officials we are sanctioning were involved in the abhorrent killing of Jamal Khashoggi. These individuals who targeted and brutally killed a journalist who resided and worked in the United States must face consequences for their actions”, as such I ask ‘What abhorrent killing?’ Let me explain this. Abhorrent is repulsive, disgusting or horrifying. So is there a grade in killing? It also implies that someone witnessed it, if not how can it be abhorrent? So let’s get back to the report.
[92] Turkish Intelligence assessed that he may have been dead within ten minutes after entering the Consulate. Here we are treated to ‘he may have been dead’, ‘may’ refers to speculation, not fact, the footnote gives us “The ten minutes reference is based on the fact that after ten minutes, Mr. Khashoggi voice was not heard”, this implies that Turkish Intelligence has 100% of the embassy bugged and wired, that is extremely doubtful on several levels.
[97] Around 15:00, CCTV cameras captured a consular van and another vehicle leaving the Consulate’s garage and arrive at the Consular General’s Residence at 15:02. The cameras recorded three men enter the Residence with what seem like plastic trash bags, and at least one rolling suitcase. Turkish Investigators have not been able to identify the size, the shape or the type of bags that the three Saudis carried into the Residence or where they may have purchased them. OK, we accept the footnote on contradictory parts, yet there is no evidence that Khashoggi, or him in parts was anywhere there, there is no evidence.
The report mentions ‘interrogation’ 4 times, yet these so called tapes on the torture/interrogation of Jamal Khashoggi. Who heard them? How were they forensically tested and who tested and seconded any report of these findings and optional facts?
I even added “It is these two events alone that requires the United Nations to consider your dismissal, it gets to be even worse when you called “Donald Trump’s administration has to share its findings into the murder with the international community“, please explain to me how the United States has any actual evidence regarding the events in a foreign nation on a consulate that is another nations grounds? How was this evidence collected? Creating a mountain of non-substantial evidence is not really evidence, even as circumstantial evidence that is founded on probability will not hold water, even if the statement “officials have said they have high confidence“, they lost the credibility they had with a silver briefcase holding evidence on WMD in Iraq, you do remember that part, don’t you? (It was roughly 16 years ago)”, the larger issues I have here are ‘has to share its findings into the murder’, so ‘findings’ and still unproven ‘murder’ is a setting that we need to accept and realise, there is negligent homicide, homicide, manslaughter, murder and capital murder. They have different settings towards intent that must be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, there are the actions of the reasonable person and they all require a body to show the evidence, the body was never recovered. Now, I am not stating that Jamal Khashoggi is alive, it is more likely than not that he is no longer alive, but I cannot prove it, as far as I can tell no one can.
I ended the article with “The consulate is Saudi territory, Turkish territory (the grounds around the Consulate) was implied to be monitored and there too a lot of errors were made, judgment calls that were basically colossal blunders. The realisation of any journalist getting so much attention with the dozens and dozens of incarcerated journalist in Turkish prisons calls for another venue and all these so called venues give rise that there are plenty of others with an optional issue with Jamal Khashoggi and you calling out HRH Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud should be regarded as stupid, the lack of evidence and the amount of circumstantial evidence alone calls you out.”
I still believe in the law and a person is innocent until proven guilty. Now, I understand that there is a lack of evidence, it makes a person not guilty. In this I accept that ‘not guilty’ and ‘innocent’ are different dimensions, yet the lack of evidence still counts, there is nothing to go on and the puppet theatre that Turkey engaged with is part to blame, the fact that they have the most incarcerated journalists on the planet counts, the report never makes mention of it. The report gives us “In killing a journalist, the State of Saudi Arabia also committed an act inconsistent with a core tenet of the United Nations”, yet the lack of evidence shows that it cannot be proven that any act was done by the State of Saudi Arabia, even if evidence shows that Jamal Khashoggi that he was killed with intent, there would still need to be evidence that the State of Saudi Arabia did this or ordered this, and that is where the problem lies. Even as the report states on page 4 “From the perspective of international human rights law, State responsibility is not a question of, for example, which of the State officials ordered Mr. Khashoggi’s death; whether one or more ordered a kidnapping that was botched and then became an accidental killing; or whether the officers acted on their own initiative or ultra vires.” Actually it does, there needs to be evidence (it is a pesky thing that evidence) that there were actions and orders by the State of Saudi Arabia they do not exist, they are at best implied. I am actually bewildered that there is no report that goes over every media on the fact that Turkey has its own history with journalists “The killings of journalists in Turkey since 1995 are more or less individual cases. Most prominent among the victims is Hrant Dink, killed in 2007, but the death of Metin Göktepe also raised great concern, since police officers beat him to death. Since 2014, several Syrian journalists who were working from Turkey and reporting on the rise of Daesh have been assassinated. The death of Metin Alataş in 2010 is also a source of disagreement – while the autopsy claimed it was suicide, his family and colleagues demanded an investigation. He had formerly received death threats and had been violently assaulted”, so where are these reports? I hope that the UN Special Rapporteur is something more than a mere UN Essay writer. I am certain that the world is eager to see what happened to these people. The media tainting setting has been extraordinary, in 2019 Google search gave well over 32,000,000 links to ‘Jamal Khashoggi’, especially as ‘Hrant Dink’ only has 1.4 million links, and ‘Metin Alataş’ has less than 850,000, so where is the visibility there? It matters because this all has been happening in Turkey, the puppet of Iran and its consort in the proxy war against Saudi Arabia, an established fact that the reports did not make mention of, the setting of Turkey is left out of consideration, which is odd as it is the nation that surrounds that setting and there is no consideration that this was not a Saudi operation, but a Turkish one. It is far fetched, I completely agree, but it was never investigated, especially when the weeks of the issue had all these contradictive issues and the media gobbled it up, but they were not investigated. Why not?
My view is supported in the report at [108], here we see “the Turkish authorities opened an investigation into the disappearance of Mr. Khashoggi on the evening of 2 October, after Ms. Cengiz called the local police about Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance. The police then contacted the prosecutor on call who in turn wrote instructions on how to proceed with the case. That same evening, Turkish Intelligence began reviewing what they say were seven hours of raw recordings from the Consulate that they had in their possession. In their own words, the assessment of the raw footage was complex and it took them several days to reach a firm conclusion regarding the fate of Mr. Khashoggi. Their initial assessment of the recordings led them to believe that Mr. Khashoggi had been injected with something, passed out, and taken alive from the Consulate in some box or container.” I have issues with “Turkish Intelligence began reviewing” and “seven hours of raw recordings from the Consulate that they had in their possession”, now the fact that governments keep tabs on embassies and consulates is not that much of a surprise, yet when we see “Mr. Khashoggi had been injected with something, passed out, and taken alive from the Consulate in some box or container” is weird, especially as there is no evidence on any of it.
So as I take notice in Al Jazeera of “There were Islamic scholars who debated whether this was a crime under Shariah (Islamic) law that could be pardoned. Because it was a premeditated crime, because it was so gruesome”, so how is it ‘gruesome’? A body was never found, murder is not proven, even if it ends up being manslaughter (me speculating that the killer, if there is one, did not intent the killing), the setting even lacks the foundation of a ‘premeditated crime’, this is a real stage and I wonder why Al Jazeera is keeping this alive. How many articles did they spend on all the journalists killed in Turkey? How much attention did the international media give all these incarcerated journalists in Turkey? When we consider that 231 journalists have been arrested after 15 July 2016, how much attention did Al Jazeera give them? It seems that the UN is part of a bigger play that requires Agnes Calamard to keep the Khashoggi issue alive, yet how much time did she spend on other issues? Incarcerated journalists in Turkey is only one, the actions of Houthi and Hezbollah combatants in Yemen is another one, and how much time has Agnes Calamard spend on Syrian issues? #JustAsking
The math in all this does not add up!
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 